German Actor Tom Schilling on 'Fabian' and the Lessons of the Weimar Republic for Today
When he was offered the lead role in Fabian —Going to the Dogs, a coming-of-age tell set in Berlin in the early 1930s, Tom Schilling wasn't really interested in doing another period drama. The German star, who played a post-war, avant-garde artist in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-nominated Never Look Away (2018), the seminal East Berlin playwright Bertold Brecht in Brecht (2019) from Heinrich Breloer, and a pacifist sent to the Eastern Front in WW2 series Generation War (2013), also wasn't a fan of the Erich Kästner book the film was based on: a largely autobiographical novel about a would-be writer living in the Weimar Republic who watches as the world he knows goes to hell.