A two-month hospital stay marks the start of a journey through the memories of a woman, the filmmaker. Invisibly providing voiceover, she returns to 1949, to the staircase she would take down to the water as a child in Marseille, where she was born. This leads her to Antwerp, England, New York, Paris and other places she visited as a child, teen or adult.
Images of cities and landscapes interlarded with archival footage of playing children, ships and ports are animated by memories of precious moments, joy and pain, her first steps as an artist and the people important to her, including her grandfather, her older sister and mainly her son Jan, with whom Hänsel, a familiar name at IFFR, is still really close. Il était un petit navire, after a French nursery rhyme, is a poetic, candid reflection; an ode to life.
Film details
- Country of production
- Belgium
- Year
- 2019
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2020
- Length
- 65"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
You may also like this
-
Les noces barbares
A traumatised mother and her rejected, damaged son who yearns for love are polar opposites in this moving drama.
-
La tendresse
Divorced Frans and Lisa get in the car to drive to a ski village to pick up their injured son. Surprisingly light road movie on broken love.
-
Par-delà les nuages – Le cinéma de Marion Hänsel
Accurate portrait of Belgian filmmaker Marion Hänsel (1949): an independent, cosmopolitan spirit IFFR is dedicating a retrospective to.