The Blood Countess loses up to 20 minutes against director’s wishes

Ulrike Ottinger said The Blood Countess was shortened by 15 to 20 minutes against her wishes, according to a Variety trade-press article published Nov. 2.

The dispute links an auteur-control fight around an Isabelle Huppert film to broader pressure on German production, after Ottinger said budgets now need €7 million to €8 million, compared with €2.5 million to €3 million for films she once produced herself.

Ottinger made the comments at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where her work is the subject of a retrospective. The film, titled Die Blutgräfin in German, stars Huppert as a vampire countess who appears again in present-day Vienna.

“The film originally had a wonderful rhythm, exactly as it was. Then I began cutting it because everyone was forcing me to. Once I started shortening it, the rhythm no longer worked,” Ottinger said at a German cinema evening at the festival.

Ottinger said she then had to rebuild the film’s structure at the reduced length. “From my point of view, it’s perfect now, but it was a big job to rework it again,” she said.

The Blood Countess had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February. Lars Eidinger and Burgtheater actor Birgit Minichmayr appear alongside Huppert, while Ottinger said the principal cast were her own choices.

Ottinger also described the production as the costliest film she has made. She said she wanted 40 shooting days but received 30, and that the crew exceeded 100 people, whereas she would have preferred fewer people and more time.

“What makes it so expensive today are these extremely extensive safety measures. Some of them are very important, but a great many are completely excessive, senseless and bureaucratic,” Ottinger said.

The article did not include a response from the film’s producers to Ottinger’s account of the cut or the production schedule. Her comments also do not establish who made the final editing decision.

The Tokyo discussion widened into German film policy. Barbara Wurm, the Austrian head of the Berlinale’s Forum section, said Germany’s federal film board, the FFA, has since Jan. 1, 2025, allocated production support automatically based on admissions and festival performance, replacing the board’s jury selection.

“This is a funding model geared toward a small number of films receiving large amounts of money. That’s not beneficial for the breadth of the film landscape,” Wurm said, adding that smaller films and documentaries lose out.

The FFA’s current festival list gives points to German films selected for several Berlinale sections, as well as Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and Venice’s Orizzonti and Critics’ Week. Wurm said the Forum is not on the list.

German federal film funding remains in flux. Variety reported that Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer nearly doubled economic film funding to €250 million for 2026, already used up, while the 2027 budget draft proposes about €200 million, pending parliamentary approval.