The Dreamed Ones

Die Geträumten

The Dreamed Ones

Ruth Beckermann

AT
2016
Feature Film
89’
Panorama

»A word from you, and I can live.«
– Paul Celan

Almost 25 years of powerful, eloquent correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan lasted until his suicide in 1970. 260 pages long, a direct insight into an intoxicating, complex and painful relationship. The two young actors Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp in The Dreamed Ones read the dialogue between the two great voices of German poetry. Bachmann is 21 years old, Paul Celan 27 when they meet in post-war Vienna, he is a Holocaust survivor, she is the daughter of a Nazi party member. For her, it’s the great love of her life, and yet she never ceases to see the stranger in him, whose experiences she never had herself. The couple reach their limits, and in a moment of doubt, she asks: »Are we just the dreamed ones?«

Between the scenes in the recording studio the camera continues to run, the actors step out of their roles, talk about the letters and other things such as tattoos or music, they have fun, smoke cigarettes, argue.
These breakaway moments see the levels blur; they convey the idea of Beckermann’s cinematic approach, for which she is using actors for the first time: The Dreamed Ones is an experiment to examine, in today’s context, the effect of a lyrically processed love story from the pen of two of the greatest poets in the German language. Beckermann developed the concept with screenwriter Inga Hartwig, and they wrote the book together over the period of one year. The linguistically dense basis of the text and the powerful acting of Laurence Rupp and Anja Plaschg (the latter is also the singer with band Soap&Skin) correspond with the film’s own scaled down cinematic language.

Director

Ruth Beckermann

Script

Ina Hartwig, Ruth Beckermann

Cinematography

Johannes Hammel

Editing

Dieter Pichler

Sound

Gerhard Daurer, Georg Misch

Cast

Anja Plaschg, Laurence Rupp

Production

Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion

Contact

AFC – Austrian Films

Portrait of Ruth Beckermann in front of a white wall.

Ruth Beckermann

Ruth Beckermann, born 1952 in Vienna, is a multi award-winning and internationally acclaimed Austrian film-maker and author specialising in documentaries with political or historical backgrounds. As well as her work as a director, she ran a film distribution company for seven years, then taught at several universities. Since the turn of the millennium she has also worked on installations and exhibitions.


Films by Ruth Beckermann (Selection)
Waldheims Walzer 2018 | Die Geträumten 2016 | Those Who Go Those Who Stay 2013 | American Passages 2011 | Zorros Bar Mizwa 2006 | Homemad(e) 2001 | Jenseits des Krieges 1996 | Nach Jerusalem 1990 | Die papierene Brücke 1987 | Wien retour (with Josef Aichholzer) 1983