Gespenster

Ghosts. DE / FR (c) 2005 Schramm / BR / ARTE. D: Christian Petzold. SC: Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki. DP: Hans Fromm. Starring Julia Hummer (Nina), Sabine Timoteo (Toni), Marianne Basler (Francoise). 85 min. Photochemical look. A Bavaria release with English subtitles. In the presence of Christian Petzold and team, including the main actresses. Viewed at Berlinale-Palast, Berlin Film Festival (competition), 15 Feb 2005. The director tells that he found an inspiration reading Grimms Märchen to his daughter and finding "Das Totenhemdchen" which he did not know before. It's the story of a mother who grieves her dead daughter so that she cannot enter heaven. She returns to the mother in her burial shirt all soiled by the earth of the grave. First as the mother lets go of her grief can the daughter be free. This linked in the director's mind to the phantom images on display in French and Belgian post offices: digitally processed images of lost children as they might look years after they have disappeared. Petzold brings together a profoundly disturbed mother who lost her daughter years ago and two familyless teenage girls wandering around Potsdamer Platz. I watched this one distractedly, but maybe it's ***