The film first came out of personal curiosity about how people come to terms with intimacy. It then grew into a research study and finally into the winner of this year’s Berlinale. Director Adina Pintilie came to KVIFF Talk with the key protagonists to talk about Touch Me Not, a film that tries to create a strong connection and dialogue with the public about topics such as personal space, intimacy, disability, beauty and difference.
The motivation to appear in a documentary varied among the protagonists. Often it was about breaking conventions, be it about prostitution or physical handicaps. “An erroneous perception about physical handicaps prevails in society. Very few people can imaging how it is living with a different body,” said Christian Bayerlein during the discuss in the Congress Hall.
This conceptual film tries to put a mirror up to the audience and intermediate as much as possible mutual interaction with the protagonists. “My goal was to create a film where the audience does not submerge into a bubble, a strange environment, as is usually the case, but to stay in the present and to interact directly,” says Pintilie. The director, in her own words, tried to maintain a certain distance from the characters. She only steered them to address various issues, such as concepts of beauty or contact. According to Pintilie, the environment was to make the protagonists feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible: “We filmed in a laboratory, which was a safe place for us to experiment.”
