Director Désirée Nosbusch Brings ‘Poison,’ Roth and Dyrholm Home, Recalling Mel Brooks’ Advice

Luxembourgish actress, director, producer and TV host Désirée Nosbusch’s (Bad Banks) first fiction feature film as a director, Poison, starring British actor Tim Roth and Denmark’s Trine Dyrholm, finally premiered in her homeland. The 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival this week screened the drama, adapted from the play Gif by the Dutch author Lot Vekemans, that explores the reunion of a couple who meet again 10 years after a tragedy.

The screening was held outside the festival’s competition lineup, which is being judged by a jury led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) and also includes Spanish auteur Albert Serra (Afternoons of Solitude), Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle), VFX guru Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Austrian actress Valerie Pachner (A Hidden Life), and screenwriter Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake). Instead, the movie unspooled in its Made in/With Luxembourg program. And the audience gave Poison a rousing reception.

The stars of the film enjoyed taking on the challenging material. “We can’t perform without generosity,” Dyrholm told THR. “We can, but it’s not as fun and as good. So I’m really looking for generous people and collaboration that I find inspiring. That was the case with Désirée and Tim on Poison.”

Roth shared with THR that for him all the pieces he looks for in a project also came together on Poison. “I read this incredible story,” which plays out as an interaction between two people at a cemetery, he said. “And the idea of a film being done in real time felt to me like something that would have been done in Italy in the ’50s or something like that.” Getting to play with Dyrholm was another exciting prospect, and so was working with Nosbusch.

“I love working with first-time directors, new feature directors,” Roth told THR. “You get to see them creatively developing. And Désirée was extraordinary.”

Nosbusch feels lucky to have attracted two big-name talents for her debut. “I have Trine Dyrholm and Tim Roth in my first movie. I pinch myself,” she told THR in an interview during LuxFilmFest. “I have been a huge Tim Roth fan all my life. I have always adored him as an actor. And Trine is one of the absolute best European actresses of our time. And I was able to earn their trust and have them in my movie. If that’s it for me, I’ll be happy and proud.”

Nosbusch knew the play, featuring the characters “He” and “She,” that her film is based on. “I came into contact with the play 13 or 14 years ago,” she explained. “I was offered to play the role of Her in the theater, and I completely fell in love with that piece. I have rarely read anything modern that touched me so deeply, and I thought it was like a symphony in terms of all the emotions.”

But she had to be patient, very patient. “It took me, I don’t know, eight years to get the financing for this film,” the creative shared.

Nosbusch has long enjoyed working across different types of media and different creative role, crediting her role on thriller series Bad Banks with opening the door for new opportunities. “Bad Banks gave me a second career and allowed me to have the privilege of choosing projects more,” she told THR. “I consider myself a storyteller, whether I tell a story through a role that I interpret or through hopefully more directing or some other way.”

Nosbusch learned directing from a big name. “Mel Brooks was one of my teachers at UCLA,” she recalled. “I will never forget that as students, we asked him: ‘How do you know the story to tell as your first movie,’ and he said: ‘If the story sticks to you like a pot of honey and you can’t shake it off, then I guess you have to tell it.’ And that’s what happened to me with Poison. I couldn’t shake it off, and I knew I had to do it.”

No U.S. distributor has so far been announced for Poison but the movie has been playing the festival circuit, which made its arrival in Luxembourg extra sweet for the director.

“We’ve kind of been all over, and so all my friends and family have been asking, ‘So when do we get to see this Poison? Everybody seems to get to see it, but not us.’ So, expectations were high, which made it nerve-wracking, but I’m really proud.”