Martha Mechow is one of the two recipients of the 2023 Erste Bank Film Award, which she received for her film “Losing Faith / Die ängstliche Verkehrsteilnehmerin” at the 2023 Viennale. On the occasion of her residency at Deutsches Haus at NYU, we co-present together with Anthology Film Archives, Erste Bank, and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York screenings of “Losing Faith” (2023), on July 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 at 7:15 PM, and on July 20 and 21 at 4:45 PM. Tickets can be purchased in person at the Anthology Film Archives box office. The filmmaker will be present for an audience Q&A following the screenings.

Losing Faith / Die ängstliche Verkehrsteilnehmerin is that rarest of phenomena: a film that is truly exploratory, both intellectually and formally. Mechow’s film is ostensibly the story of a young woman, Flippa, who still bears the scars of having been abandoned by her mother as a child. Flippa tracks down her sister Furia in Sardinia, where she’s joined a de facto feminist commune of young women dedicated to forging identities and relationships outside the confines of conventional social structures. The beauty of Losing Faith is that it’s genuinely a film of ideas, one that itself explodes conventional assumptions about how films can be created and structured. Made in an intentionally unpolished and anti-naturalistic style, it fearlessly combines elements of cinema, theater, and literature: apparent improvisation, poetic language, frankly philosophical musings, unrestrained flights of fancy, and even an in-depth analysis of Jane Austen’s novels (the latter delivered by Flippa as she chews on her retainer).

“Losing Faith”, a film by Martha Mechow. 2023, 100 min, DCP. In German, English, and Italian with English subtitles.