- Germany
HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH
Synopsis
Ida (Angeliki Papoulia) owns a sailing yacht and a crew of five men who come from different countries, share no common language and mostly work in silence. In Marseille she encounters soldiers of the Foreign Legion – an encounter that will not let her go. She decides to follow the Legion’s route: from Marseille via Corsica to Sidi Bel Abbès in Algeria, the troop’s former headquarters. At sea, the boundaries between the people on board blur; life in close quarters produces an understanding that needs no words. “Human Flowers of Flesh” by Helena Wittmann (Germany, 2022) is less a story than a movement through the Mediterranean.
German filmmaker Helena Wittmann shot on 16mm and operated the camera herself. She rejects the usual narrative devices: no backstory, hardly any dialogue – the characters read out historical texts about the Legion while the film contemplates water surfaces, forests and asphalt. Denis Lavant appears briefly as Galoup, his character from Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail”, to whose trail this film owes its own. It premiered in the international competition of the Locarno Film Festival in 2022. “Human Flowers of Flesh” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022.
Festival
Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
