Hinter den Farben

In a pared-down studio setting – a chair in front of a neutral black background – eight people take turns in reading out an account of an extreme experience in the first person from a piece of paper: after suffering a fall while canyoning, 25-year-old Micha was trapped for days in the hollow behind a waterfall, invisible to the outside world. After all attempts at freeing him failed, impotence, panic and the fear of death set in. The protagonists play his role in proxy with the filmmaker as a interlocutor, also commenting on Micha’s story and incorporating their feelings and own experiences into the process. It’s about fear, pain, desperation, physical and mental cages – and above all about being alone with yourself. And the moment of being freed. Micha never appears. In a specific blend of staging and documentary, performance, empathy, identification and talking heads, HINTER DEN FARBEN presents a testimony in eloquent fashion – of much more than just a true story. (Birgit Kohler)