Lamento

As an experimental hybrid between ancient mythology and the present Lamento deals with the restriction of female voices in public discourse.

A politician, an actress, a mother and a scientist hold feministic monologues on their private and professional life as a woman, while each being confined in a theatrical room on a brightly lit revolving stage. The texts are sourced from a range of talks and interviews of contemporary public female figures. The protagonists struggle to make themselves heard against the revolving stage that perpetually turns them away from the viewer and in this way cuts off their voices. The result is a fluid multi-perspectual, intersectional dialogue that criticises the stereotypes of their social roles. In the machinery of the dark understage three mythical creatures run a commentary like an ancient chorus.

With its protagonists, the film translates four of the most prominent female figures of ancient mythology, Medea, Cassandra, Medusa and Helena, who were deprived of their voices in different ways, into the present. Lamento raises the question to which extent the narration and inscription of these ancient images of women in our cultural memory still affects the restriction of female voices in public discourse til today.