Off Season

Director's Statement

I was working on a state description of a couple in an off-state just before the birth of the common child. A provocative, albeit pessimistic, view as a counterpoint to the many relationship films that end there, where the sometimes strenuous life begins as a couple.
Through the main character, Judith, the film tells the story of a woman in tense relationship between her self-conception of working in a position of responsibility, a boyfriend who desires a classic family model, and responsibility as a mother. She feels pressed into a role in which she can only act unfree.
At the very beginning there was the fascination for Palermo and the desire to shoot a film in this city. During a trip, I discovered a place of pilgrimage where pilgrims visit Ultrasound images, birth certificates. Since I got father in early years, I’m interested in the meaning of family and I realized that children in Italy - unlike in Germany - are almost something sacred. It is about the dissolution of conservative values, the rethinking of Role models. Judith’s encounter with a saint is representative of the encounter with herself. Because in religious contexts family has always been traditional Values that have given people a compass in their hands. But how can family, relationship and success be reconciled today? Fit children at all in modern life designs?
“Off Season” is also a movie about power and the battles for this, about Dependencies in and from an ego society.
- Henning Beckhoff