STILL-LIFE

(2023), 105’ min

“Stillleben” (Still-Life) is an autobiographical documentary about a life dominated by panic attacks. During a research trip in southern Italy, I suffer a first incidence of panic in a highway tunnel. From then on, panic attacks occur in ever new situations. My everyday life and my activity as a filmmaker, originally associated with extensive travel, become increasingly restricted. I begin to change my life, buy a construction trailer, seek refuge in the countryside in Belgium. The film is a photographic portrait of this other, quiet life and an essayistic reflection on its background. In conversations with a neuroscientist, Holocaust researchers, a Tibetan lama, relatives and friends, I try to understand where my anxiety comes from. Is anxiety hereditary? Is the solution a simple life in nature following the example of people who have deeply impressed me: shepherds and monks in Corsica, Mount Athos, in Syria, in Belgium?