How would you feel if your ex-husband reappeared in your home, having forgotten your divorce? Hanne, played by Dagmar Manzel, finds out in the film A Fading Man (Der verlorene Mann), as her orderly life with partner Bernd, portrayed by August Zirner, is gently upended by her ex Kurt, who, it turns out, now has dementia.
The debut feature from German director Welf Reinhart, starring Harald Krassnitzer as Kurt, world premiered in the Tiger Competition of the 55th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
“The three try to make the best of an awkward situation, which becomes even more tangled when efforts to return him to his care home falter and his daughter proves difficult to reach,” reads a synopsis for the film on the IFFR website. “What begins as an involuntary arrangement takes an unexpected turn when Hanne admits to herself that she still loves both men, and Kurt and Bernd, in their own ways, are willing to explore what that might mean. Slowly but with unmistakable intensity, they start to behave as if they were in the spring of their lives rather than its late autumn.”
A Fading Man, produced by Philipp Maron and Tristan Bähre of Maverick Film and Louis Merki, is the feature directorial debut of Reinhart, who co-wrote it with Tünde Sautier and co-edited it with Ulrike Tortora. The film was made in co-production with BR and in collaboration with ARTE, Merki and Reinhart Film (Merki, Reinhart), as well as CinePostproduction and Metz-Neun Synchron. Bendita Film Sales is handling sales.
“A Fading Man is first and foremost a love story,” says Reinhart. “It also deals with the subject of dementia, but what interested me most from the very beginning was the relationship triangle connected to the story of a returnee: a man comes back to his ex-wife after 20 years because he has forgotten everything that happened between them.”
His takeaway from making the movie was “a heightened awareness of the challenges posed by an aging society, care dependency, and the shortage of care services. I think this is a topic that concerns many people.”
Reinhart sees A Fading Man as a film that can also attract younger audience. “Perhaps because they have relatives of the appropriate age or even with an illness,” he offers. “Or in relation to the alternative relationship model, since the characters are essentially living, if you will, a hinted-at polyamorous relationship. I hope that younger viewers will also give the film a chance and be able to find personal meaning in it.”
Are you curious or ready for an unusual love story? Then check out the exclusive trailer for A Fading Man here.
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