Editing
On the first day of the Corona lockdown, the director‘s father is picked up by an ambulance. He dies shortly thereafter. Mother and daughter mourn in the parental apartment, isolated on 49 square meters — and connected to the outside world only by telephone. With painful intimacy, these phone calls exemplify the loneliness of the mourners in pandemic times. Photographic images of the desolate apartment are marked by an intense geometric strictness, which, in spite of the confinement, also creates a certain distance to the inevitable. “27 STEPS“ thus leaves room for interpretation and deals with a universal question: How does isolation affect us when we are dependent on solace and help? This is a very personal film which puts a magnifying glass on the circumstances that we are all experiencing right now.
In March 1998 director and producer Ulrich Schamoni – who was dying of leukaemia at the time – documented life in his house in Berlin’s Grunewald district. Schamoni kept on filming until just a few days before his death. The result was a moving and colourful chronicle amounting to a total of 170 hours of tape. Interspersing a selection of these images with excerpts from Schamoni’s films such as "Es" and "Chapeau Claque", Schamoni’s photographer daughter Ulrike Schamoni and editor Grete Jentzen have created a loving tribute to a generous and multifaceted man.
People have different ideas on how to get closer to God. The makers of this fascinating Swiss documentary follow two Pakistani men. One is a dervish or mystic, undertaking a life-long pilgrimage with heavy metal rings on his legs. He walks through the desert until his feet are raw, praying at every shrine he comes across along the way. The other is the custodian of a centuries-old musical tradition, for whom the idea of God lies in self-knowledge, insight and harmony with the environment – a harmony that he strives to achieve through life-long study and passing on his knowledge to new generations. In Pakistan, it is impossible for them to act together as the risk of attacks means any large meetings are prohibited. The film follows the men as they visit impressive holy sites, as well as in their everyday conversations, and provides a beautiful, sideways look at Pakistani society.
