Der Atem

The Breath

The night has its own songs. These are songs about love and hardship, about hope and bitterness, about fulfilment and disappointment; experiences caught between day and dream. Unforgotten moments of pausing, of taking a breath, of infinity solidified into a moment.

In "Der Atem" ("The Breath") Uli M Schueppel collects existential experiences of Berlin at night. People in the darkness of the city tell their personal stories of holding their breath. Theirs are stories of worries, pain, fear and happiness. The breath of these individuals appears to merge; their portrait fragments come together to form a composition, a symphony of life that leaves room for one’s own thoughts, associations and visions. Filmed on analogue black-and-white celluloid, this film deliberately and radically plays with the harsh contrasts of the night. And, like some of its narratives, the film’s images lose themselves in a coarse-grained and reflective blur, creating contrasting surfaces for the words or enclosing them in a magical cosmos. Der Atem is the third part of Uli M Schueppel’s "Chants" trilogy about space, time and the body. A cinematic view of the world, shot between 1998 and 2019.

Source: 69. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)