A killer is walking in a forest. You can find all kinds of things rummaging around at a flea market, maybe even love. Art performance is as much a part of the film as a Strindberg passage. Peacock feathers serve as a metaphor: you can’t make out the whole picture just by one feather.

Antek Liebmann is spending the summer in a small village in Picardy. A summer visitor? A migrant? Someone fleeing from something, perhaps from himself? Liebmann lives in a small room, his neighbor befriends him, her daughter skips rope. Liebmann is friendly, but doesn’t let anyone get close. Liebmann: meaning love and man in German. He does find love, Sébastien is very lovable but Liebmann can’t open up entirely. She helps him come out of his shell. Liebmann is hiding a secret, a terrible one.

Jules Herrman worked on the screenplay for her feature film debut in just a few days and sketched scene ideas on 27 slips of paper which she then realized with a small team and 7 actors in a French village. Godehard Giese, the protagonist, fully embodies the role and this creative and experimental adventure wouldn’t work otherwise. LIEBMANN is quite similar to German mumblecore films – but a tad different. Not only because it isn’t set in Berlin, but also because the improvised comedy in the tragicomedy is scaled down in favor of clear, deep characterization interested in the splits within the Liebmann figure.

Harald Mühlbeyer

Translation: Elinor Lewy