Ich war zuhause, aber

Drei Ordnungen: Erwachsene, Kinder (die nie nur Kinder sind) und eine Schöpfung (Hase, Hund, Esel, Wachtel, Moos, Wasser, Licht), die auch ohne uns auskommen könnte. Zu Erde werden wir alle, der Satz sticht aus den Hamlet-Proben der Schüler*innen, die Angela Schanelec als Synkopen in den Lauf ihrer vielgliedrigen Erzählung setzt. Vor zwei Jahren hat Astrid ihren Mann, haben ihre beiden Kinder den Vater verloren. Eine neue Angst, aber auch neue Daseinslust hallen durch den Film, der über uns langsam sein filigranes Dach errichtet, aus feinen, verzweigten Szenen und Fragen: Was ist mein Auftrag im Leben? (Robert Weixlbaumer)

In Anwesenheit von Angela Schanelec, Maren Eggert und Ivan Markovic (Kamera).

Angela Schanelec’s films don’t end after the credits. In her latest work, she creates a dialogue between intimate emotional states and an exterior world that relentlessly moves forward. She is interested in the sort of situations where we deeply mourn the loss of a loved one and look out of the window, only to see that there is still wind in the trees. The title already announces a contradiction. More than a mere reference to Ozu Yasujirō’s I WAS BORN, BUT … (1932), it also contains doubt. What is a home? Moving between past and present as well as different characters, the film finds a possible answer in the liveliness of children. Yet their presence is not always comforting or even apparent for a woman (the always touching Maren Eggert) who has lost her husband. In one of the year’s great scenes, she drifts to the cemetery at night to lie down in the moss next to a quail, while we hear the saddest cover of “Let’s Dance”. Very often in cinema, there is no place for helplessness or passivity, as these feelings seemingly contradict the mechanics of the moving image. However, Schanelec translates those exigent feelings into pure cinematic movement which takes place between the shots. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In the presence of Angela Schanelec, Maren Eggert und Ivan Markovic (camera).