I Don’t Want to Be Just a Memory

Fellow members of the Berlin queer community mourn together the loss of their dead friends due to substance abuse and the mental health crisis as well as the loss of urban safe spaces in general. By sharing personal materials, stories, and honest criticism about the club scene, working on this film becomes a means of healing for this group of friends. Resembling glow-in-the-dark fungi, they radiate light together as a network of support and care, they transform dead bodies and memories into a collective structure that sustains future living.

Sarnt Utamachote is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. They believe that cinema can be a tool for social engagement and collective healing. They are a co-founder of un.thai.tled, an artist collective from the German-Thai diaspora, and have curated multiple research-based exhibitions concerning postcolonial histories, the Southeast Asian diaspora, and activism in divided Germany (GDR/FRG). They work as a film programmer at XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, and at Sİnema Transtopia Berlin.

Production Klaus Salminen, Sarnt Utamachote. Production company Nordic Media House (Berlin, Germany). Director Sarnt Utamachote. Screenplay Kareem Baholzer, Sarnt Utamachote. Cinematography Julian Curico. Editing Ygor Gama, Sarnt Utamachote. Music Kei Watanabe, Bráulio Bandeira. Sound design Pussy Ranz. Sound Dr Rey. With marum, René Bertune, Andre Fau, Katharina “Tinka” Frommann, RTALIN, Andrei Mihu, Diana Kleimenova, Bráulio Bandeira.

World sales Raina Film Festival Distribution

Films (selection): 2020: I Am Not Your Mother (video installation, 14 min.), Soy Sauce (5 min.). 2022: Sonic Reverbs (22 min.). 2024: I Don’t Want To Be Just A Memory.