Das Retirée or the last house of my father

As a director with a background in theatre, I love looking at film as a performative tool. The idea for Das Retirée took shape a couple of years ago, when my father’s ageing became more pronounced. One day, after a minor operation, we reminisced at his bedside about this small house my father designed, but never realised.
It was around this time that the idea of a safe space entered my work. In 2018 I directed SAFE, a performance concert made in collaboration with the composer Oxana Omelchuk and the Belgian contemporary music ensemble Ictus. The performance revolved around hypersensitivity towards all kinds of environmental influences. SAFE offered an immersive journey for the senses, starting as a live concert and evolving into a sophisticated live radio play.

Thinking about safe spaces brought me back to my childhood. As a child I was loud and curious. I shared my father’s spatial fascination, but knew early on that I was more interested in how people relate to their context, than in the architecture itself. From an early age, my father nourished my interest in theatrical spaces and stories. This forged a strong connection between us.

For different reasons both my parents were forced to take care of themselves from a young age. They both developed a warm but also critical relation to their surroundings, setting high standards for their environment. My father was born in Stuttgart in 1937, four years after the Reichstag fire. His parents got divorced when he was young, which was quite rare at the time. My grandfather, who was the director of a paper company, took it for granted that his son would follow in his footsteps. But after the Second World War my father decided to become an architect to support the reconstruction efforts. When he refused to take over his father’s paper company and chose to study architecture instead, my father was told that he no longer belonged to the family and was disinherited.

These last few years I realised that I am more like my father than my mother. My father is 43 years older than me. He is stubborn and generous. Life at home was disciplined and there was no confusion about who was in control. Behind his urge for control, my father hides a remarkable sensitivity. He has incredible stamina and a strong will, yet he craves recognition.

Das Retirée is a way for me to deal with my father’s increasing vulnerability. To deal with the lines that become blurry, the smudging of the layers of what we can and cannot see. Hoping to ensure space for this vulnerability, every shoot is guided by certain rules that orchestrate our dialogue. These are made to create a certain degree of equality, and enable my father and me to become possible co-authors. The film is a tool to break through our German reservedness; our difficulty to talk about feelings. It’s an attempt to construct our shared story out of lived and un-lived visions of togetherness and what we think we will leave behind.