Die Stadt, The City

An unusual mission takes the French woman Lou (35) to a harbour city where she is supposed to find the young Théo (23). However, she keeps the fact that she has long since tracked him down to herself. Théo is working on a large construction site, where the fantasy of a perfectly planned neighborhood is being cast in concrete and where Lou observes the tender approach between him and his colleague David (44). When Lou refuses to accept her client’s new demands, she loses her income and her life in the city becomes increasingly precarious. Conjuring up images of detectives, vagabonds and flâneurs, Lou finds her ways through ever shifting spaces while guarding her freedom like a treasure. But the conditions for her to be in the city change once more and fundamentally when Théo dies in an accident at work.

I was once asked if Iwould like to be paid to track down a stranger in a city that I don’tknow. I would be curious, but how far would I go? Does my main character Lou let me experience things by proxy? Definitely. I think that’sa common and legitimate motivation for fiction in general and for cinema in particular. The city in my film subtly reflects a present that is being shaken by huge global crises. The social shifts are leading to uncertainty – we sense that something is being lost, but we don’t yet know what will take its place. When it is unsettled, we are unsettled. In the city, different realities coexist, everything is in motion and in constant exchange. What moves us is condensed in the city and it is a space that makes unexpected encounters possible. Lou lets herself be carried along by the city’s flow. She preserves something of avision that seems from times gone by and transports it into a contemporary, accelerated world. At the centre of her personality is the self-confidence with which she transcends the symbolic and social boundaries that separate the different zones of the city. She has no qualms about entering areas of male hegemony and does not even claim the right to be there: she simply confronts us with the fait accompli of her presence.