Is This Fate?

In Germany, the asserted interference and the position adopted by the film director, who advocates the production of films with and not about people, divides and arouses heated debate. In France, on the subject of Marguerite Duras wrote about ‘Is This Fate’, ‘Everything that happens to a woman is commonplace (…) desire to love, tragic incapacity to express such love, all of it thrown into the night, into virtual silence. It all happens in the German depths, in this unwelcome proletariat of post-war Germany. What I mean is, that nothing happens in this film apart from cinema, the fabulous explosion of silence thanks to the camera, the translation, by that woman, Irene, of that silence into a language that is never concerted, that is unveiled through the camera, is if under the effect of a drug - here we say under the effect of the shooting and the sound recording.’

Jürgen Ellinghaus
Programmer, director