MY FATHER’S HOUSE



AT 2013
Colour, 65 min., HD, 16:9, Stereo, German, subtitles in English
Int. Premiere Karlovy Vary IFF

Written, directed and produced by Ludwig Wüst Co-produced by Anne de Boismilon
Cinematographer Klemens Koscher Line Producer Matthias Pázmándy Camera Assistant Sonja Aufderklamm Assistant to the Director Thomas Pürstinger Sound Gregor Rašek Editor Samuel Käppeli Set Photography Anna Sautner

With Nenad Šmigoc, Martina Spitzer

Supported by BKA - Innovative film, Stadt Wien MA7


heimat-film.net

Synopsis

Andrej lives in Frankfurt. A phone call leads him back to the place of his childhood, to his father’s house. A hand-held camera provides an almost continuous shot of a visit to his childhood home, which becomes an uncertain search for his roots. We learn about the past through his verbal exchanges with a former female classmate, but even more is revealed through the unspoken – gestures, conversation lulls. A film about directness that is absorbing yet subtle.

Director's statement

over many generations my family lived in the small upper palatinate village schlicht in bavaria. the village was first mentioned in a document in the 12th century. a trading artery going from hamburg to rome passed our hamlet. in the 17th century my family moved there, they came from the north as charcoal burners and settled down in Schlicht as farmers. this didn´t change until my father was born. he was raised there, but as an 18-year-old at the beginning of 1945 he had to enlist and he returned home 1950 after his war imprisonment. but he didn´t want to live there any longer, and even less if he´d have to be a farmer. so he went to munich to study at a masters school of fashion. there he met my mother, married her and moved to nürnberg (my mother´s birthtown). At the same time as he got an offer to go to Milan as an fashion designer he received a call. it was his mother telling him to finally “come home”.

Years later (when I was about 10), my father wanted me to keep the same promise. if I go abroad, I should come back home when he asks me to. intuitionally I realized that this would be wrong, and one day I decided to leave for good, which I eventually did.



„The moral winner in Karlovy Vary. ... Exact in tone, timing and length. ... with My Fathers's house I can just bow for the filmmaker and his masterpiece.“
Freddy Olson, July 2013, Bokomotiv

„Poète maudit Ludwig Wüst enters into a drama, that lies deep under the skin of an everyday story, as if it was buried in the darkness of the past: an unexicted, exigent, very precisely directed film, carried by an extraordinary couple of actors: Nenad Smigoc and Martina Spitzer.“
Stefan Grissemann, Mach 2013, Profil

„'My Father´s House' is a melo minus the drama—and that is exactly why it is so intense. Wüst’s film makes do with very little: just a few sites, actors, and probably also little money. But he tells so precisely of rejection and missed chances, that you feel as though you are tracing your own memories. After all, we all know that most beautiful of summer days, which promises everything … and ends in tears."
Maya McKechneay, March 2013, sixpack films

„Again Wüst is producing a documentary-like atmosphere, a certain sadness but also a certain relief in the end. And again he stirred up the audience.“
desistfilmblog, 29.03.2013