An experience like this changes your life deeply and irreversibly. I hesitated for a long time about whether or not I even wanted to reopen this topic. Only when looking back after about ten years, did it become clear to me how long it had taken until the experience had actually moved into the background. As I read the detailed files of my own case in 2022, I had the feeling that it would also be wrong to have experienced something like this but make nothing out of it. At that moment, I was reading a lot of Annie Ernaux, which strengthened me in these thoughts.
From the start, it was clear to me that the film should not place the perpetrator or my subsequent trauma at the centre. I was far more interested in a story that opens an internal perspective – a perspective that is defined more strongly through my personality, my perception, and my relationship to the world, than through the fact of being a victim. At the same time, I wanted to deal with questions that occupied me deeply, ones that are both personal and social. Tying them together was a challenge and an experiment, and I did not know if it would be successful. It was a process in which one had to accept and welcome the existing vagueness and uncertainty.
It was especially important to me not to tell my story as the fate of an individual, because that is not how it is. We know of the violence which women in Germany and around the world face every day, as well as the shockingly high number of femicides – including here in this country. These women do not move in a vacuum-sealed space, but rather in a social environment that carries this violence with it or, at least, perceives it. In this context, we often talk about structural problems. What interested me is who in fact gives form to these structures. Is it not ultimately individuals who shape a culture, make decisions, and take responsibility – or not? It is not rare for the cases of individual people to lead to changes in the law, because it becomes visible that something is fundamentally wrong. Even if the system often feels like it is working against you, I consciously wanted to put the focus on the effect individuals can have. Sometimes not much is needed for this. The right words at the right moment can make a big difference – just as much as they can destroy.
WAS AN EMPFINDSAMKEIT BLEIBT (SOMETIMES, I IMAGINE THEM ALL AT A PARTY) is film about closeness, attention, and individual responsibility. A film that believes it is possible to go on living without bitterness in spite of having experienced violence – but with an appropriate and perhaps necessary anger.
Daniela Magnani Hüller
