The hybrid film is a phenomenon of contemporary film culture: in these films, a new, experimental way of narrative cinema meets documentary film language. The resulting open form of film defies any standardised categorisation and is therefore a rarity at film festivals. In order to provide these new developments with an audience, IFFF Dortmund+Köln is showing the first feature film by Italian artist Rä di Martino in its film series Fake Space. Film sets, or more precisely ruins of film sets, were the starting point of this entertaining hybrid film, which leads the audience a merry dance right up to the end – or is there actually no ›end‹ at all, in the end? The film is located in Morocco, whose desert has been used many times in Hollywood films. The protagonist is called Corrado – but he is actually only a body double for the film’s principal actor: Ned. Based on the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, which was filmed with Burt Lancaster in 1968, Controfigura takes the absurd story of a man who wants to swim back home only via swimming pools and sets it in the desert landscape of North Africa. An expression of a mid-life crisis, a modern interpretation of Odysseus’s homecoming or a psychological metaphor – in this remake by di Martino, the classic Hollywood film takes on a more critical, geopolitical twist, but there is no shortage of comedy. (MZ)

Film Series Fake Space