“Tatort – Parasomnia”: Who is Hannah Schiller?

Sunday 15th November 2020

From Ingo Scheel

The 20-year-old Hannah Schiller is the star of the Dresden “Tatort” about a mysterious house, an unexplained series of murders and creepy visions. The actress made her debut at the age of nine, her stations: Magic Flute. Lindenstrasse. Zoo station.

“It was clear very quickly that Hannah had understood the character Talia correctly and we were convinced by her interpretation,” says “Parasomnia” director Sebastian Marka. A good decision indeed, as the 20-year-old from Bonn shouldered the multi-layered role of the disturbed Talia, who encounters the ghosts of the house at night and who thinks she was responsible for the death of her mother, extremely self-confident and convincing.

Her film persona is a lot younger at the age of 16, and her everyday life in real life is completely different, but Fischer still felt a connection with Talia: “I find it most exciting to play roles whose personality is very different from mine” “What Talia has in common with me, however, is the art through which we express ourselves. Just like me, she paints and draws a lot. That’s why I have all of her drawings and pictures for the crime scene.” I painted it myself, which was not only great fun, but also a great opportunity to get into the role more deeply and help shape the film. “

From “Phoenixsee” to the cinema

It can hardly be overlooked that Hannah Schiller can already fall back on quite a bit of theater and film experience. As a nine-year-old she was already on stage, singing in the children’s and youth choir at the Bonn Theater. She later took on the role of a choirboy in Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, and last year she drove out her claws in the role of the cat in the children’s opera “Brundibár” by Hans Krása.

On TV she became known to a larger audience with a role in the WDR series “Phoenixsee” after smaller appearances, including in “Lindenstrasse”. And her career also picked up speed in the cinema from 2017. She was seen in Sven Taddicken’s “The Most Beautiful Couple”, among others. The role in Dresden’s “Tatort”, however, presented her with some, much larger, tasks. “The intense emotions were, in addition to the joy I had in playing them, of course also a challenge for me. Almost every day I played scenes in which I had to cry or scream. Or I was naked in my pajamas at night Wandered through the garden on your feet, “as Hannah Schiller recounts with a laugh.

One thing can hardly be denied: Especially in the first scenes of “Parasomnia” she reminds a little of the climate activist Greta Thunberg. The braid with the strands around her face, the attentive, critical look, her hand-knitted woolen scarf. It is thanks to her engaging game that such distractions quickly blur, she skillfully keeps her timing on the line between tragedy and joy, between hallucination and reality.

The Dresden “Tatort” proves to be the perfect stopover for her career, the next big projects have long since been in the towel. In April 2021 she can be seen in Dominik Graf’s already wacky Kästner film “Fabian”. Hannah Schiller will also go into series production next year, and the material is extremely legendary: The drug story of Christiane F. will be reprinted via Amazon Prime. Then Hannah becomes one of the “Children from Bahnhof Zoo”.