Anima – Die Kleider meines Vaters (Anima – My Father’s Dresses)

Film program, DE 2022, 94 min., dt. OV + engl. UT

By: Uli Decker

We are happy to welcome director Uli Decker at the Pornfilmfestival. Melanie Lischker, the director of the film Bilder (m)einer Mutter will discuss with the audience together with Uli Decker after the screening.

One thematic focus in this year’s festival are the big secrets and unspoken truths between parents and their children, Under the title “Family Constellations”, the festival shows two documentaries (“Bilder (m)einer Mutter” is screened just before “Anima – Die Kleider meines Vaters”) and the fictional “Grand Jeté”.

The narrow constrictions of traditional families, norms and gender roles and the ensuing confines to a free sexuality have also affected men who didn’t fit into the role that society wanted them to fulfill. After their father’s death, director Uli Decker inherits his “secret” box which contains his second life as a closeted transvestite. Decker’s own conflicts with their assigned gender roles and a tentative identity quest are surprisingly mirrored in the father’s fate. With the help of animations, diaries, stills and film archive, Decker tells the poignant life story of a man who was born in 1936 into a deeply catholic family until his death in 1998. A fascinating genre picture of West-German society, full of inner conflicts and a rare male voice from the post-war generation that has questioned his own masculine role.

Molly Shanker

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