Nicole Foelsterl asks her grandmother about their family history during the Second World War and the time of National Socialism. Her grandmother speaks about the situation of the German-speaking minority in Hungary. The filmmaker dreams about having to flee herself. It is only ever fragments that are remembered and told. The older woman doesn’t see herself properly in the picture, and the two protagonists don’t come together. Between their meetings, video snippets always hang like ghost images. There is a noise, and another era is briefly shown. The grandmother’s account is not consistent, it falters, as do the memories and the home videos. How much of the past can be made visible here, and what remains unspoken? In every-day situations, the two women appear to be struggling over what can and should be passed on.… >>>
Nominated:
A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle
- Director: Nicole Foelsterl
A granddaughter accompanies her grandmother through illness to death. Both women are close together; the film shows their closeness and an intimacy in their interaction with each another. The granddaughter, as filmmaker, presses against the limits of what is bearable – their convergence between loving care and brutal confrontation. In doing so, she creates a relationship portrait that is radical in its atmospheric observation. Her camera becomes its own protagonist in the last meetings, where not much is spoken but many questions are unresolved. The grandmother’s dog is always there; he too observes and is observed. The unspoken will remain unspoken.… >>>
What does a generation remember, whose parents have experienced a war? Which forms of speaking are possible between the children and their parents? What do they ask, and what do they think of the things they are addressing? In CLOUD FOREST, young women from the Netherlands take center stage as protagonists in the film. Their parents experienced the war in former Yugoslavia. The generation of children listens attentively about their own past. They follow interviews that they themselves have given about the question of talking about the war experiences of their parents. In doing so, it is as though they are in another time; in a type of fairytale they listen to themselves. A recollection of one’s own questions of remembering; a confrontation with a past which is part of one’s own biography, but which needs to be conveyed in order for it to become accessible.… >>>
Nominated:
A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle
- Director: Eliane Esther Bots
