Ingeborg Bachmann - Someone Who Was Once Me

Who was Ingeborg Bachmann? This hybrid documentary approaches the renowned writer in an unusual way. In improvised scenes, Sandra Hüller gives her a moving and surprising presence. Created to mark the writer’s 100th birthday, the film is a fascinating portrait poised between documentary and staged performance.

Through a poetic search for traces, this documentary takes audiences inside the artistic process. Actor Sandra Hüller approaches Ingeborg Bachmann’s life on an imaginary day, giving her words a moving presence. The film follows the key stages of the writer’s life through an artful weave of improvised scenes, archival treasures, interviews and Bachmann’s own texts—from her wartime childhood in Kärnten, through her breakthrough as one of the central figures in the literary group Gruppe 47, to her final days in Rome. Her journey is shaped by her complicated relationships with Paul Celan, Hans Werner Henze and Max Frisch, as well as by her unwavering struggle to find her own radical voice amid public acclaim and existential crises.

In this film, director Regina Schilling (born 1962 in Köln) turns her attention to one of the most influential German-speaking intellectuals of the post-war era: Ingeborg Bachmann. What makes the film unusual is that audiences get to witness the creative process, for example as Regina Schilling and actor Sandra Hüller discuss and experiment in an effort to bring Ingeborg Bachmann back to life. Ingeborg Bachmann – Someone Who Was Once Me was the opening film at DOK.fest München. This year alone, Sandra Hüller can be seen in four cinema releases in Norway (Rose, Fatherland, Project Hail Mary and Digger), showcasing her versatility as an actor. In the Bachmann documentary, she impresses with a deeply personal approach to the writer.

Ingeborg Bachmann – Someone Who Was Once Me is screened in collaboration with the Austrian Embassy in Oslo.