A film by Alina Cyranek
Germany 2025, 87 min
NRW-Premiere
Followed by a film talk with Alina Cyranek.
The narrative has been condensed from four real-life accounts into one story in order to preserve the anonymity of the women. All the events actually happened, nothing is invented. A dancing couple creates images of a relationship in a black box, highly aesthetic, physical and poetic, thus leaving room for the complexity of such a relationship. The manipulation of the woman is made increasingly visible through animation by printing out individual frames on paper, editing them and inserting them back into the real film. The classic documentary framework is formed by expert interviews that clearly and objectively categorise the power relations and relationship structures.
Facades is not an easy film to consume, but a challenge for the viewer. Domestic violence and the statistics associated with it are brutal, harrowing, physical. Facades reflects all of this in its form, is radical and obstinate.
Director & screenplay: Alina Cyranek – Cinematography: Tim Pfautsch – Editing: Maximilian Raible – Music: Freya Arde – Voiceover: Sandra Hüller – Dancers: Gesa Volland, Damian Gmür – Choreography: Sebastian Weber – Produktion: hug films, hug-films.com
Alina Cyranek
Alina Cyranek works as an author, director and producer. In her films, she mainly deals with socio-political issues. In addition to her film projects, she works as a content creator for the MDR short film magazine unicato and arte KURZSCHLUSS.
Alina has received numerous awards for her short films, including the Golden Horseman of the Bamberg Short Film Festival, the Best Doc Award at the Social Machinery Film Festival in Salerno and the Audience Award BEST IN SHOW, Chicago Feminst Film Festival.
She studied at the TU Dresden and completed a double master’s degree in media art at the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Tongji University Shanghai as a DAAD scholarship holder focussing on documentary and experimental film. In 2018, she co-founded hug films GbR in Halle (Saale) with animation artist Falk Schuster. Curtains is her debut film.
