Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film.
Julian Radlmaier's Phantoms of July (2025) is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries.
Let me show you five images that hang in my apartment:
INSPIRATION #1
The first image you see when you enter my apartment is this ink drawing by Jan Bachmann hanging over the light switch in the small hallway. It conveys a utopian spirit of idleness and friendship. Jan and I once owned a very similar cabin in the woods together, with a very similar table in front, where he drew his first graphic novel Mühsam, Anarchist in Anführungsstrichen (2018) and I wrote the script for Self-criticism of a Bourgeois Dog (2017). He also made some beautiful alternative posters for my films, as well as for Alexandre Koberidze and Faraz Fesharaki, two other friends who inspire me a lot. I believe in cinema as a practice of friendship.
INSPIRATION #2
In my kitchen, there’s this portrait of the young Werner Schroeter (sitting next to Magdalena Montezuma), whose assistant I used to be in the late 2000s. Each morning, I would ask Werner to come to the editing room, but first, we would stop at a café called Gagarin for several hours, where he talked about his life and work while I chased away the wasps to which he was deadly allergic. The encounter with him and the poetic freedom of his cinema was decisive.
INSPIRATION #3
On the wall opposite to the picture of Werner, over the kitchen sink, there’s this cutout from the Cinema Ritrovato program catalogue. It’s a still from Man Is Not a Bird (1965) by Dušan Makavejev. Why is it hanging there? I’m not sure. It’s where I drain my spaghetti, which, as a kid, I imagined were slithery snakes to be slurped without fear. It reminds me of a romantic trip. I have family ties to former Yugoslavia. I like the cheerful anarchy of Makavejev’s films. I’ve learned from his way of conceiving political cinema as a collage of fiction, documentary, and comedy. I’m moved by the strange ways in which the dream of a democratic socialism haunts his work.
INSPIRATION #4
I printed and framed this portrait of Marcel Duchamp when I was blocked while writing the screenplay for Phantoms of July (2025). I found his cunning smile very relaxing, so I put it on my desk in the living room to remind me not to take things too seriously. Shortly after, I found a new lightness in writing. At the moment, the desk is very cluttered, so Duchamp moved to the shelf, but he is always at the back of my mind, literally.
INSPIRATION #5
In the bedroom, there is a picture of the view from the balcony of the tiny studio I rented as an exchange student in Paris back in 2007. The toilet was in the kitchen, or vice versa. Apart from that, it reminds me of the time when I really started to discover film history, and began to dream of the films I might once make, while chasing the clouds drifting by.