Human Flowers of Flesh

a film by Helena Wittmann
2022, 106 minutes

Poster

Synopsis

After a stirring encounter with the French Foreign Legion, Ida (Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia), sets sail with her own corps of five men, none of whom speak the same language, to trace the route of this fabled troop. Their voyage will take them from Marseille to Corsica and finally to Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, the historical headquarters of the Legion. Along the way, boundaries blur. Life at sea produces a special kind of mutual understanding. A legionnaire of yore makes an about-face.

In her spellbinding follow-up to the critically acclaimed Drift, Helena Wittmann invites us to relinquish control and join her on a Mediterranean voyage unlike any other.

Reviews

"Helena Wittmann is uniquely elemental, even primal, in her concerns...Human Flowers of Flesh pushes her formal and thematic predilections towards a vanishing point where narrative dovetails with pure aesthetic elegance. "
-Jordan Cronk, Cinema Scope

"Too often, we forget that cinema is not an empty vessel for story or meaning; filmic material is content in and of itself, a dance of light, sound, space, and screen that impresses upon us sensorily before it does rationally. Wittmann’s audacious gesture in Human Flowers is not to eschew narrative, but to deploy it for tangible rather than hermeneutic effects. "
-Devika Girish, Film Comment

"A towering, teetering and exquisitely-wrought puzzle box."
-Little White Lies

"A meditative gem."
- IndieWire

"Wittmann’s daring second feature is a gorgeously immersive, fluid work of cinema."
- Sight and Sound

Press Materials

High Res Stills and Press Kit
Press Release

Where to watch

Coming Soon to Theaters

Playdates

April 14-20: Metrograph - New York, NY
April 20: TIFF Bell Lightbox - Toronto, ON
April 21-27: Gene Siskel Film Center - Chicago, IL
April 23: UWM Union Cinema - Milwaukee, WI
April 27-30: Northwest Film Forum - Seattle, WA

May 4: Rotations/Acropolis Cinema - Los Angeles, CA
May 5: Eckerd College International Cinema Series - St. Petersburg, FL

Festivals & Awards

Official Selection - Locarno International Film Festival
Official Selection - New York Film Festival