Birds Eye View, the UK's first major women's film festival, returns to London for a fourth year on March 6th. Over the next couple of weeks, Dazed Digital will be speaking to four featured directors, starting today with Sonja Heiss, whose docu-style backpacker comedy Hotel Very Welcome will close the festival. (Or click here for our interview with Jennifer Venditti, director of Billy the Kid, or here for our interview with Lucia Puenzo, director of XXY, or here for our interview with Mariam Jobrani, director of The Fighting Cholitas.)

Dazed Digital: How did you come up with the idea of travel as the centrepiece for the film?
Sonja Heiss: For years Nikolai Graevenitz and I travelled through Asia as backpackers, and at a certain point we asked ourselves what we were looking for in a place so far away and exotic: what does travelling mean, and how does our culture coexist with others? We came to many possible answers, along with the decision to make this film. We also realized that although such a journey has lots of comic potential, no one has ever made a funny film about it. Films like The Beach just serve to exalt or glamourise the backpacker excessively.

DD: What were the biggest problems you encountered while shooting the film?
SJ: This kind of shoot requires a high frustration threshold, because unplanned things happen all the time. You might be corralled in by a crowd, get sick, have a power cut, find that a train journey takes thirty instead of twenty hours, or have someone walk in front of the camera just in the perfect moment of a scene. You might be shooting covertly while pretending to be a tourist in a hotel, find yourself in a 42C bungalow after a twenty-hour party shoot, or fail to gain permission to shoot in an airport after making five applications to the Indian authorities. But sooner or later, you get used to it. A shoot like this is good training for life - you get more laid back.

DD: Are any of the characters based on people you know or have met while travelling?
SH: None of them are exactly like people I've met. But Chris O'Dowd's character, for example, is of course influenced by the behaviour of the classic hardcore dope-heads I met in my youth or often on journeys. The viewer will definitely recognize himself or people they've met in this film, especially if they've travelled. The characters were also influenced by some funny or ironic moments from my own history of travelling.

DD: Chris O'Dowd (most recently seen in The IT Crowd) co-stars in the film as an Irishman who struggles with the fact that he will soon become a father. How did you develop his character?
SH: When we saw him the first time on the casting tape, we knew he was perfect. We developed the character and his story based on him. The basic idea was that we wanted the character to try to escape from a problem one can`t escape. It would always follow him. We did a lot of the script work collaboration with Chris O`Dowd. Also, he's a huge improv-talent and he would always fill the character with life, invent something in the moment and surprise us very often. Shooting with him was a training for me for laughing heavily but noiselessly.

DD: Were you intending to make a point about the attitudes of European tourists in Asia?
SH: For us it wasn't about the western tourist in gerneral. The film is more about the "better" tourist, because the backpacker would always consider himself as the better tourist, even though he isn`t really able to immerse into the foreigns land culture or to really get to know the people.
 
DD: Cutting from character to character, how did you make sure that the film hung together as a whole?
There's various aspects which give the film a flow and build an overall impression. First of all, the common aspect of travelling and being on a search. Then there are emotional connections, but also contrasts. A pretty classical drama with a kind of parallel development in a absolutely non-classical film is another aspect. And of course the world our searchers are lost in and a filmic atmosphere highly based on the photography.