The image of a room, its appearance changing with the shades of light. A window front, seen through the window. Changing flower arrangements on a side table. Sounds, entering the room from outside the frame. A construction site hints at changes in the exterior. Rehearsals. Are the sound waves of the piano reaching us from downstairs or from next door? In 21.3 °C Helena Wittmann reduces the filmic elements to the essentials: light, shadow, sound, direction. Out of this minimum, stories emerge that linger, atmospheres that resonate. Little by little the viewer is thrown back upon herself/himself. Through the facing window front someone seems to look back at us. Only the temperature remains the same.

An indeterminate location, summer. The inhabitants of a shared apartment ask themselves where they might live. They imagine countries, communities, and places. Time passes and nothing can change that. At some point, they all drift into a deep sleep.

Following on from the impressive Drift with its hypnotic transatlantic sequences reminiscent of Michael Snow, Helena Wittmann’s second feature is set in the Mediterranean Sea. The heroine navigates along the route of the French Foreign Legion from Marseille to Sidi-Bel-Abbes via Calvi on a contemporary Odyssey that is at once political and sensuous.

Two women spend a weekend together at the North Sea. Walks on the beach, fish buns at a snack stand, mobile weather forecasts. Sky, horizon, water. One of them will soon return to her family in Argentina while the other one will try to come a step closer to the ocean. She travels to the Caribbean and the foreign makes her vulnerable. Then, the land is out of sight. On a sailing vessel she crosses the Atlantic Ocean. One wave follows the other, they never resemble. Thoughts go astray, time leaves the beaten track and the swell lulls to deep sleep. The sea takes over the narration. And when the other one reappears in it, the wind is still in her hair while the ground beneath her feet is solid. She returns and the one of them could ask: "Have you changed?