Walk the Walk

A family breaks up and goes its separate ways. The father (Jacques Martial) is an athlete with ankle problems, the mother (Laure Duthilleul) is a biologist and her teenage daughter (Betsabée Haas) is a passionate singer. The film follows the three of them in constant alternation. The daughter's journey takes her from Marseille via Strasbourg to the open drug scene in Zurich and finally to Berlin. The father is drawn to Odessa, the mother stays behind her microscope in the south of France. Film scholar Margrit Tröhler: ‘The three stories are interwoven like a fugue, with one absorbing the momentum of the other and passing it on to the next, and although the characters’ travel movements are centrifugal, the images come together to form a dazzling whole, as in a mosaic, through the tangible and constant presence of the filmmaker as a companion and dialogue partner: the fourth character.’ Kramer's films have always operated beyond the categories of documentary and fiction. In this film he achieves a hybrid form never seen before. (Volker Pantenburg)

Photo: Viennale

In the presence of Richard Copans on 21 October 2024