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HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH

Helena Wittmann
Germany/France, 2022
106 min.

The sea is Ida’s home – only one woman among five other men on a ship. Searching for fleeting and secretive traces of the Foreign Legion, time passes slowly, dilating into an existential drift.

An unclear feeling looms over an eclectic crew wandering the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Is it numbness? A trance? Ominousness? Human Flowers of Flesh compiles fleeting thoughts, myths and traces of history in a slow odyssey whose references to the Foreign Legion invoke Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. Idleness and prolongation give forth a form of slow cinema that incites almost hallucinatory images, as time is dilating into a lyrical mirage cluttered with foreign languages and spaces. The feeling of expectation and the lengthy, seemingly aimless journey spawn tensions hard to verbalise, yet Helena Whittmann’s film obsessively returns to the ocean as a fountain of familiarity. (Dora Leu, BIEFF 2022)

Date and Location

1st of Octomber, 20:30, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

Premii și festivaluri

Helena Wittmann

Helena Wittmann (b. 1982, Neuss) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Hamburg. Her films, among them her debut feature film Drift (2017), have been shown internationally at film festivals (including Venice Int. Film Festival, Toronto Int. Film Festival, Int. Film Festival New York, Int. Film Festival Rotterdam, Int. Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Viennale, FID Marseille) and received several awards. She has been teaching at Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts between 2015–2018 and worked as mentor at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastian. Besides for her own films she is also responsible for the cinematography for other directors and artists such as Luise Donschen, Adnan Softic, Philipp Hartmann.

  • Technical sheet
  • SCREENPLAY/CINEMATOGRAPHY/EDITING: Helena Wittmann
  • COMPOSITION/SOUND DESIGN: Nika Son
  • ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Luise Donschen
  • PRODUCTION/COSTUME DESIGN: Anna Ostby
  • CAMERA ASSISTANTS: Tim Liebe, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn
  • UNDERWATER IMAGES: Kevin Sempe
  • MICROSCOPIC IMAGES: Vilius Machiulskis
  • TITLE DESIGN: Hanzer Liccini
  • CASTING MARSEILLE/PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Julie Aguttes
  • PRODUCERS: Production Frank Scheuffele, Karsten Krause, Julia Cöllen (Fünferfilm, Germany)
  • CO-PRODUCERS: Christophe Bouffil, Fred Prémel, Julie Aguttes (Tita Productions, France)
  • CAST: Angeliki Papoulia (Ida), Vladimir Vulevic (Vlad), Denis Lavant (Galoup), Ferhat Mouhali (Farouk), Mauro Soares (Mauro), Gustavo de Mattos Jahn (Carlos), Steffen Danek (Falco), Ingo Martens (Ingo)

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The sea is Ida’s home - only one woman among five other men on a ship. Searching for fleeting and secretive traces of the Foreign Legion, time passes slowly, dilating into an existential drift.

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