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Filmstill Mamie 44

Mamie 44

Mamie 44
Lucie Dèche
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
France
2023
55 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

An old family secret is fermenting in the father’s winery in southwest France. The grandfather had been executed by the Résistance in 1944 because he had collaborated with the Nazis. For decades, no one talked about it, daily work continued, from cultivation to harvest, from the wine press to maturation, an eternal cycle. The daughter comes to visit with a camera and a microphone. She remixes the sounds of farming, asks questions, builds openings in the experimental interstices between image and sound for the father to come to himself. Maybe what was buried and ploughed under can be reflected today – if they succeed in breaking the cycle for a moment.

The father has answers. He knows the patriarchal system of agriculture, where neighbours are envious and unpleasant things are quickly interred so they will not be passed on to the children. And yet what was interred has not dissolved completely, over generations. Insects buzz over the soil, something underneath attracts them. A small frog is caught in the wine press with the grapes. And the filmmaker’s daughter looks for a new tune on the old family piano.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Lucie Dèche
Cinematographer
Lucie Dèche
Editor
Caro Beuret
Producer
Guillaume Bordier
Sound Design
Lucie Dèche
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize