Jesus, du weisst
Ulrich Seidl / AT, 2003 / 87 min.
A film like a confessional. People go to church. People sit alone on a church pew, people pray to Jesus, who is everything to them: father and friend, redeemer and savior, guide and wailing wall – talkative, silent, loving.
We meet a student who defies his parents and attends Mass daily, spends all his free time in the parish and simply tells Jesus everything and regrets everything: erotic fantasies as well as heroic dreams. And the retired chemistry teacher whose spouse cheated on her with another woman: In her prayers she dreams of vengeance. But isn't vengeance a sin?
In formally rigorous shots Ulrich Seidl presents six fragmentary portraits of believers who ask questions, look for answers and spill their hearts out to Jesus. Each of these stories opens a space, an intimacy, a view of what one might call God.
Ulrich Seidl: "I didn't want to show the hypocrisy or fossilization, the neurosis or bigotry or kitsch of the Catholic church. What interested me was people's intimate prayer to God."
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Ulrich Seidl
Production year
2003
Country
AT
Original title
Jesus, du weisst
Length
87 min.
Language
German
Subtitles
ENG
Format
35mm
Part of
Ulrich Seidl
Eye Filmmuseum presents Ulrich Seidl – Über das Leben, die Liebe und den Tod, the first exhibition – and the first complete film overview – of the renowned Austrian filmmaker in the Netherlands. Featuring a wealth of early, little-known and newly commissioned (film) works, the exhibition confronts visitors with the lives of a number of seemingly ordinary individuals, people who try to, in their own ways, make something of life in a late-capitalist society in which meaning has been replaced by consumerism.
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