Merci d'être venu

Direkt gezwungen hätte ihn sein Produzent Michel Seydoux, die sporadischen Videotagebucheinträge der letzten Jahre zu einem Film zusammenzufassen, so Cavalier. Nachgeben musste er vor allem, weil der Produzent jünger und stärker sei. Seydoux steht kurz vor seinem 80. Geburtstag. Unser Glück, erhalten wir so doch noch eine letzte (?) Cavalier’sche Abhandlung in Logbuchform, über die immer präsentere Vergänglichkeit im fortschreitenden Alter. Bilder persönlicher Alltagstristesse und schmerzhafter Verluste stehen vergnüglichen Begegnungen gegenüber und Momenten, die zeigen, dass der Schalk noch immer fest in seinem Nacken sitzt. (Otto Römisch)

A few years after his last film L’AMITIÉ (2022), nonagenarian filmmaker Alain Cavalier now creates a testament film that doubles as a self-portrait, continuing the singular practice he has been pursuing since the mid-1990s of shooting alone with a DV camera. Composed of fragments of life gathered over the decade-and-a-half stretching from the premiere of PATER at Cannes in 2011 to the present day, the film revisits the subjects closest to him, seeking to show how intimately filmmaking and living are intertwined. With the same sensitivity that defines his other work, he turns the ordinary into a source of encounter and wonder, looking beneath the surface to get to the heart of things. He films his partner, sketches brief, unfinished portraits and observes animals. His own vulnerability is ever present. Yet through these images, he also offers a reflection on his approach: what he seeks to tell—or omit—and the path he follows to recover something which connects him to “the first images of childhood”. At the heart of his work are life and death, cruelty and tenderness, loss and reunion. And here he is, camera in hand, gathering these moments to preserve and cherish them and offer them back to us in turn with a sense of renewed vitality. (Nepheli Gambade)

Alain Cavalier (Auswahl): UN AMÉRICAIN (1958, K), LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE (1962), L’INSOUMIS (1964), MISE À SAC (1967), LA CHAMADE (1968), LE PLEIN DE SUPER (1976), MARTIN ET LÉA (1979), CE RÉPONDEUR NE PREND PAS DE MESSAGE (1979), UN ÉTRANGE VOYAGE (1981), THÉRÈSE (1986), LIBERA ME (1993), LA RENCONTRE (1996), VIES (2000), LE FILMEUR (2004), PATER (2011), LE PARADIS (2014), LE CARAVAGE (2015), ÊTRE VIVANT ET LE SAVOIR (2019), L’AMITIÉ (2022)