Interview: Franka Potente and Tom Tykwer on the Enduring Energy of ‘Run Lola Run’

A quarter-century after its release, Run Lola Run is still not out of breath. Both stylistically and spiritually, the film’s influence permeates through 21st-century moviemaking. Tom Tykwer’s explosion of kinetic energy, starring Franka Potente in her breakout role, burst onto the global cinematic scene in the final year of the 1990s, its iconoclastic structure reflecting emerging forms of media ranging from video games to music videos.

And yet what’s true about most works that can go the distance in the popular imagination also applies to Run Lola Run: As the timeliness fades, the timelessness emerges. The film’s form isn’t a kneejerk response to prevailing cultural aesthetics but an imaginative outgrowth of its very plot. Run Lola Run presents a triptych of possibilities as Potente’s red-headed Lola seeks to find and deliver the 100,000 German marks needed to replace those that her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), lost. Little else besides the deadline remains constant in each 20-minute iteration of her propulsive run through Berlin’s streets, with even the slightest divergence producing a wildly different outcome for each participant who crosses Lola’s path.

This regenerative narrative structure is more than just an engrossing gambit. It’s an invitation to become interactive in Lola’s story, just as she grows more determined and forceful to write her own outcome. Run Lola Run vividly embodies the postmodern idea that cause and effect are never as determinative as a classical storytelling structure would have us believe. Tykwer and Potente’s collaborative openness to the vast variety of available life courses demonstrates how chance and choice, as well as fate and free will, are forever locked in a delicate dance dictating our experience of time. Lola’s own story may end, but for 25 years and counting, audiences have continued her run by learning to see those same forces at work in their own lives.

I spoke with Tykwer and Potente ahead of the Run Lola Run’s theatrical re-release to commemorate the anniversary and its 4K restoration. Our conversation covered how freedom provided a guiding ethos for the production, why the film is like a playground for audiences, and whether audience responses have changed since its release.

Did being involved in such a profound story about free will and fate shape your own lives beyond the production of Run Lola Run?

Franka Potente: Ours and yours, right? Anything at any moment, just the sheer fact that we’re talking right now and not out there in the world doing other stupid things.

Tom Tykwer: Yes, but it’s had a bit more than just a random effect.

FP: I just gave the random answer! You give the more specific.

TT: The joy of these interviews is that they remind us how impactful the movie was for us. The way we made it was a joyful, inspired, and crazy-positive art-making experience. And also in terms of connectivity, closeness, camaraderie, and collaborative-loving togetherness. Everything about it was so nice, and it’s become the blueprint of everything we’ve tried to do in the future. I still think I go, “No, no, it’s possible,” if people tell me, “But sometimes it’s really hard! You have to be stricter, you have to have rules, and you have to have stupid hierarchies and vertical constructs.” It’s bullshit! I know it even more today, but I learned it there.

I also learned [about] the construction of work, especially work that people came to because they loved something [about it that went beyond] the money part. It was particularly joyful because filmmaking is such a collaborative effort. It’s an exciting experience that shapes you and your relationship to work and to society, because it’s my belief that our working structures are the blueprint for a mini-society. Yes, I might be the chancellor, and there are ministers and all that, but you can be inclusive and collaborative and always have discussions, or you can just try and rule. That’s the choice you make. Those are choices, and you can also choose to tell the chancellor to shut up and listen. So you design a little society that should reflect the other one, and ours, in Run Lola Run, was a pretty utopian, beautiful [one to be a part of].

Do you still believe in the film’s central thematic idea that a passionate, driven individual can break the cycle and beat back time?

TT: We do!

FP: Yeah, of course!

Have you noticed that people’s responses to the film have changed over time? Do younger audiences who are so used to stories that look and feel like Run Lola Run take something else from it?

FP: I feel like they’re still very similar, where the questions lie and where the answers fall. Like the strength of choice, [it’s about] the power that lies within and stuff like that. Right?

TT: I think our discovery is still that the similarity is also because there’s something in the film that people relate to because it’s not so much related to generations or periods of time. Of course, that’s amazing to discover for me now because I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen it for 20 years either. So now I see it and I go, “Oh, wow, it’s still there?” Yes, of course, I feel older now. I’m not the guy anymore who made this film, but, of course, in a way I am. And in particular I think what’s in there that makes it hopefully still worthy to be shown is the sheer joy of being invited to the experience of art as a party. [both laugh] You go in and become the partner in crime of this movie that takes you on this journey with all your expectations and knowledge you have about cinema, and it says, “Yes, let’s play with this.”

You’re invited to this playground, and the playground-ness of the film, I think, is something that isn’t aging because that’s what we want to see in cinema. We want to be invited. We want to not have this finished menu shoved down our throats. We want to be invited to test this and this, or [say], “Look at this, this tastes so good! We could also go this way. Now, why not a cartoon? Why not this?” And you go, “Yeah, right!” And while it’s happening, the audience is asked for maturity as a viewer to say, “I’m ready to co-construct this and enjoy it.” Because if you’re not seeing that the movie is related to your own experiences of movies, you can’t enjoy it.

Franka, as a little bit more active as a co-filmmaker in this process, how did the freedom and the joy of making this film translate into your performance?

FP: Every day, we would come together. And first of all, it didn’t feel like work or, “Oh my god, how much do I have to run today?” It was really more like, “Okay, what are we going to create today?” I feel like what was on the page, maybe because I didn’t always have so many lines, was more like a mere starting point. I remember Tom sometimes coming in the morning and giving me a piece of paper that had a line of poetry or something on it, and that was just the starting point of an abstract opening of our brains to just see where it would take us.

That togetherness that we had in this flow of creativity and work—or whatever, it didn’t feel like work—never left me as an experience. It felt really safe. I didn’t feel like, “Oh, today we have so and so many scenes to do,” though obviously there was that aspect. But once we started to get into it, it was more about where can we take this today. And every day ended beyond my expectations if there were even any. It was really just like one big day. Every day was just a continuation, energy-wise, of the last. At the time, I lived in Munich. I was in a city that I didn’t know, so I was very open to that energy and all the things. It was a completely immersive, new, and crazy experience for me at the time. I felt safety with the movie and Tom. I was completely open. I was completely immersed. That was my entire being for those four, five, six weeks.

How did you find the right level for the character’s energy? She’s grounded and real, but she can also believably scream loudly enough to shatter a glass clock.

TT: You have to remember that in those days it was unusual—yes, it had been done, of course—but it was still not a regular thing [to see on screen] a good-looking young woman pick up a gun, scream full rage at her father, point a gun at him, and [do what Lola does]. Rage and anger as expressions are areas that are owned by male characters. It’s usually the guy who saves the girl, and he has to run. It’s really funny because the guy in our firm is basically just standing around waiting for her! [both laugh] He smashes the phone to be a little physical, but otherwise, he’s just there and talks to a blind woman, who happens to be [Moritz Bleibtreu’s] mom.

Energy was the [word in] headlines [about the film]. It’s, yes, all about energy, about breaking the walls of a pre-constructed reality that can make you feel like a marionette, about [wanting to cut] the ropes and liberate yourself from all the preoccupations and expectations, and just go where you actually want to go. And when [Franka] understood that, that’s the beauty of [her performance]. When she embraced that, she could do no wrong.

FP: I just ran. Like, factually, I just ran all the time. If you see me enter [a scene] breathlessly, I was running before that. So there was never a discussion of like, “This is the level of energy.” It was just like: you run, and that guides the energy. I was just running all the time, then you would enter breathless and that was the level of energy. As simple as that! There are very simple solutions to these things, actually, if you just approach it like that.