Jedermann und Ich

Is it possible to get close to someone who sees their sole task in life in losing themself in the parts they play? How can a film portrait be created when every image only contributes to further fictionalization? Who is facing each other when the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred? Katharina Pethke looks back to dissect the past and her contradictory feelings for the celebrated actor Philipp Hochmair, following the lines of her own artistic and personal doubts.

The magnificent black and white images guide the eye from the surfaces to the details, whose meaning the director probes and questions in her subjective, tentative voiceover. The film preserves the rawness of unfinished reflections without getting mired in vagueness. Step by step, the honest assessment of a desire is achieved; a desire which could function only in the delicate balance between attraction and repulsion and from which Katharina Pethke frees herself by adopting a position of artistic distance. Her sometimes self-mocking commentary is supported by dramatic guitar riffs (provided by Hochmair’s band project “Die Elektrohand Gottes”) and underpinned by filmic references, all of which revolve around the making of images and the relationship between reality and imagination.