 Hey Golden Bears, I'm Samantha Cox-Para from CalTV Entertainment here at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. I'm here with Helene Heggeman, the director of Axolotl Overkill, and the main actress Yasna Fritzie Bauer. So Helene, Axolotl Overkill is based off of your book Axolotl Roadkill. What was it like transforming your book into a film? Quite interesting. I wasn't really passionate about doing this. I mostly did it because I didn't want anyone else to do it. This was the main reason. When I started writing the script, I just realized it's much more difficult than I expected it to be. Because I just had to find a way to transform this stream of consciousness like novel into a film which isn't too standardized and isn't too experimental at the same time. Helene, what's it been like being a young woman filmmaker making stories about the LGBT community? Sometimes I think if there would be a guy and a girl, we wouldn't need to defend the love story so much and so often. This is the main difference because people see the film and are like, OK, what kind of relationship do they have and do the love story bigger? You don't get it. It's not emotional enough if you would have a guy and a girl and everyone would immediately think, OK, yeah, sure. Probably they might have been in love with each other. This is also what makes it so important to treat these stories and these relationships as natural as possible. Not mark them as a problem, not show, OK, this is this weird special stuff to women in love with each other and one of them is going to suffer and is going to be stigmatized no matter how cool she is. Animals also play a large role in the film. I do, yeah. So I was wondering what the scene with the penguin is supposed to represent and what it was like working with a penguin. I hate the penguin. No, I really hate the penguin because I have really huge respect for shooting with animals. And actually the penguin bit me. I think you had 35 sets and you filmed in 24 days, right? Yeah, yeah. What was it like? Well, actually it's quite normal in Germany to have such a short time to shoot a feature film. You mostly have six weeks or mostly between 24 and 30 days. As such a young director, what advice would you give to young filmmakers and young writers? Never let other people tell you what to do and never trust other people too much. You know what I mean about your own vision and just have a vision. I think this is the most important thing. Make sure to keep an eye out for axolotto overkill.