Films by Sarah May Handler

Austria, Germany 2023, 71 min
by Hans Broich

Minuet is a documentary adaptation based on the eponymous novel by the well-known Flemish author Louis Paul Boon. A man, his wife and their much younger housemaid tell us about themselves and their relationships to each other, which are characterized by mutual, furtive observation and glances.Within the iconography of this patriarchal triptych, the film’s characters grapple with their own subjective narratives and over their interpretation of the film’s recurring images.Between re-enactment and reproduction, the film and the novel’s brutal language do not even spare the director’s own private life, in turn raising the question: which of the recounted moral violations is conserved within his own four, heteronormative walls? Minuet is the terse story of an ordinary act of violence – the power to interpret a reality.With: Charlotte Brandhorst, Maximilian Brauer, Josefine Fischer a.o.

2021, 96 min
by Hans Broich

Volker Spengler allegedly once said, “Do you know what a liberal is? A Nazi without a spine!”. This story is told at one of the tables in a Berlin based pub, Diener Tattersall, where the filmmakers have gathered several of the celebrated actor’s companions. Over the course of the film, these people – actors, directors, musicians, and leading figures of the film, performance and theater scene – tell anecdotes about Volker Spengler, reminiscing of their first encounters and embarrassing moments, their admiration and irritation. It remains unclear as to who is sitting with whom at what time. The montage essentially creates a cinematic space of its own in which everyone can potentially talk to and listen to everyone else. This space always seems to exist a little outside of time, or indeed, in its own mythical in-between time. Many memories linger: the fact that he always smelled nice; his paradoxical potential to be very tender and yet extremely rude; his uproarious, rasping laughter; and the fact that he wasn’t a liberal.With:Inga Busch, Karina Fallenstein, Marc Siegel, Margarita Broich, Marie Löcker, Martin Wuttke, Maximillian Brauer, Rainer Will, René Pollesch, Susanne Sachse, Vaginal Davis, Volker Spengler, Wieland Schulz-Keil