Dead Man´s Memories

Colour, 35 mm
Austria, Germany, 2003, 88 min
Section: Official selection

Synopsis

A corpse of an unknown man is found on a beach near Lisbon. Detective Pinto is in charge of the investigation and immediately discovers the victim’s  video camera. The camera holds shots of a girl who knew the deceased. He soon searches out the witness who turns out to be a foreign student. When questioned Alice describes to the sceptical detective her strange relationship to archaeologist Hans, who was allegedly using her to heal own frustrations through. A young man named Fernando who was killed in a truck accident is another key figure…. Writer-director Markus Heltschl’s film presents a crime mystery about the relativity of truth. The author himself designated it as “a story of an obsession to observe others.” All protagonists – the victim, the female suspect and the detective – are burdened with traumas and each hides something. Video recordings play a key role in a narration reminiscent of Atom Egoyan´s early films. They serve to gradually and clearly reveal a film reality which has been shot in accordance with the Dogma 95 manifesto.

About the director

Markus Heltschl (b. 1952, Innsbruck, Austria) studied at film school in Vienna. He has been a screenwriter for, among others, Christian Berger’s film Raffl (1984), screened in the Directors Fortnight section at Cannes, and Lukas Stepanik’s Unter Freunden (1991). Heltschl’s debut was Am Rande der Arena (2000), followed by the animated short Space in Time (2001).