About the director

Eva C. Heldmann was born in Dillenburg and founded the Mondpalast arthouse cinema near Limburg an der Lahn in 1979. From 1987 to 1989, she designed the programme of the iconic Mal Seh'n cinema and also directed the Frankfurt Film Show from 1984 to 2000, which cemented her as an important cultural figure in the city. Her first film, written and directed by herself, was "Johnny oder das rohe Fleisch" in 1984. Many of her subsequent films screened at the Berlinale as part of the Forum or Forum Expanded, including "Fremd gehen" in 2000, "r i v e r r e d" in 2012 and "Im Gehäus" in 2017. Her most recent work, the essay film "Ihre ergebenste Fräulein", also premiered at the Berlinale and received good reviews.

Press reviews

"In the montage, individual-personal and official-authoritative writing practise closing ranks and rub against each other. Image and sound are sometimes very loosely associated [...] In other moments, text and image create almost polemical unambiguities" (Cosima Lutz, Filmdienst)

"Just as one shot does not yet make the gaze unbiased, Ihre ergebenste Fräulein is not a plea for an immediate experience of nature. By prefacing her film with a historical description of the weather, Heldmann awakens associations with the climate crisis and the destruction of nature in us as contemporary viewers [sic]. It is always the outside of the intimate experience of nature that counts." (Stephan Ahrens, critic.de)

The director about the film

"At first I thought we were being held up to a mirror here. But it's not that simple. The forms of society today and back then are very different. I'm not a historian or a philosopher. That's why I worked my way through the topics. Poverty and begging - Dörrien also addresses this in her writings. Then there is the topic of foreigners, nature, forests and the climate in the sources. These are also our themes today." (Eva C. Heldmann in an interview with taz)