Amina Handke adapts the 1967 theatre play Kaspar written by her father Peter Handke. Instead of a young man being tortured by language, we meet an old woman played by the director’s mother, Libgart Schwarz, who loses her linguistic abilities while rehearsing for the very same play. What begins as a pure and playful family meta-fiction turns into a surreal, partly nonsensical Babylonian confusion, it’s just that it’s not different languages that are clashing but layers and fragments of the German language, the language of the father. The film avoids the traps of representational cinema. It’s all noises and muttering, injunctions and an almost Dadaist pleasure in repeating sentences until they completely lose their meaning.
Frau Oliveti
Christine is a wheelchair-using woman with severe multiple sclerosis. In order to escape her isolation, she makes a journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains, along with other people with varying disabilities. During her stay she begins to regain the use of her limbs. This is in contrast with others, who appear to have stronger faith than Christine but experience only slight, passing improvement. Her fellow pilgrims are eager to call it a miracle; however, as the pilgrimage draws to a close, exactly how accurate a claim this is becomes uncertain.
