Petzold was advised by friends to include an introductory text outlining the fable. Still, the director refused. “Nobody knows the undine myth,” he says. “In Germany, too, they know the word ‘undine’, they know it’s something to do with water nymphs, but they don’t know the story behind it. And when you don’t know something and it’s surrounding you, you have to work.” He compares it to the westerns he consumed as a child that were based on Greek myths and Bible stories he’d not yet been taught. “I like movies that don’t explain it concretely.”