Films by Nicola Graef

Germany 2020, 90 min
by Nicola Graef

Lonliness. A feeling that takes hold of more and more people. In a world in which professional flexibility, growing self-centeredness and the loss of social liabilities have become more and more common, this diffuse feeling seems to have settled. Berlin is symptomatic of this: in the same place at the same time, the documentary tells stories of people in different realities. They all share the experience of loneliness. The capital itself becomes a symbol, the backdrop for observations of being alone in society.

Germany 2016, 105 min
by Nicola Graef

Priming, designing, discarding and always trying to establish a certain distance. This is how the dramaturgic concept of this portrait could be described. Consequently, the first shots show Neo Rauch, the Leipzig-based star of the international art world, in his workshop. His success is predicated on the enigmatic and cryptic quality of his large-format paintings.In muted colours he designs arrangements of melancholy figures gliding across time, space and history. Palimpsests filled with references and quotes that lead back as far as Renaissance painting. Filmmaker Nicola Graef makes no attempt at exegesis – Neo Rauch remains as remote as his creations. Instead she lets others talk: collectors of his million dollar paintings which have made it to the hyper-designed dining rooms of New York art lovers and the bedrooms of Italian villas. Does Neo Rauch, the exotic specimen with East German roots who keeps tackling the Teutonic and authoritarian, paint only what’s expected of him today? In his thoughtful way, he invariably comes up with surprising answers.A ponderer, without doubt, to whom the film offers a stage he refuses to enter. He knows the stereotypes and classifications that he sees as dressing. The film’s strength derives precisely from these opposing movements. (DOK Leipzig, C. Klauß)

Germany 2009, 45 min
by Nicola Graef

Siri Hustvedt is one of the most important contemporary authors (What I loved, The shaking woman). She received attention initially in 1993 for her first novel, The Invisible Woman. Step by step, Hustvedt has carved out a place for herself in the literary world as an author with a special feeling for the poetic, an almost tender concern for her protagonists, an exceptional capacity to strike nuanced tones, and most of all a sensitive perspective on all human spiritual states. Siri Hustvedt provides in the film MY LIFE unique intimate moments. She talks openly about her childhood, her upbringing with her three sisters and the everyday life as an author. She talks about the love and work with her husband Paul Auster, her daughter Sophie in their home in Brooklyn and her close friend Salman Rushdie. The film focuses with her on her major source of work, New York City and town of birth Northfield in Minnesota, where she meets up with her mother and sisters.