cherchez la femme

Queen A.D. sets out to explore the vastness of her ruined realm “A few years ago I discovered a book entitled ”Doctor Diamond's Portraits of the Insane" by Adrienne Burrows and Iwan Schumacher. The photograph of a young woman (titled Queen A.D. from about 1854) particularly fascinated me. From a report by Dr. Diamond: "... In her delusions she possessed great riches and held the highest rank of a queen." The mysterious appearance of this woman, an old attic and a piano piece (“Mode de valeurs et d'intensités”) by Olivier Messiaen were the most important impulses for this film." - Director Daniel Höpfner "Illness and delirium, hiding and deportation - associations evoked by an intense sequence of images that slowly and magically captivates and leads us into another world of perception. Told consistently, a story of its own kind emerges, a movement rather, from a kind of rigor mortis to an active approach to light, to a world that nevertheless remains outside. Disturbing images, fascinating in successful combination with the sound, which make an inanimate space appear animated, while the people seem almost frozen and struggling for life, associating past, dream, desire." (FBW jury statement - rating valuable)