14/02/2003 - The French director's poetical tale of a journey from Paris to Berlin that is also a rite of passage into adulthood

Funded with money from Eurimages and the CNC, and produced by Les films de la Croisade, Simple Production, Carré Noir and RTBF - Belgium, Mon voyage d’hiver is about a 40-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy who travel from Paris to Berlin.
Presented in Forum New Cinema, it was directed by and stars Vincent Dieutre. “I made this film because I wanted to explore the ways in which an adult conveys his emotions to an adolescent without lying. That is why I began this project, which is both a physical and a mental journey through Germany. I developed the scenes as the film took on its form. Although I did have some notes written down, the actual journey inspired other ideas.”
Intercut with excerpts of piano music by Schubert, Schumann and Beethoven played by Andreas Stayer, and with an off-screen narration, Dieutre edited long video sequences into his footage. Mon voyage d’inver aspires to be a long poetry recital. “The books I read while preparing this film were fundamental, especially “J’apprend l’allemand” by Daniel Lachaud, but also writers like Paul Celan, Berthold Brecht and most of all Ingeborg Bachmann - none of whose work I knew before starting out on this adventure, and all of whom I now adore.”

(Translated from Italian)