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7:00 PM

Ingeborg Bachmann – Someone Who Was Once Me + Intro

Film | Cinema Screening

  • Goethe-Institut London, London

  • £6, £3 Concessions and for Goethe-Institut language students & library members.
Tickets via Eventbrite

Colour image of a woman with long blond hair who jumps up in the air against the background of an old bridge with a round arch Regina Schilling: Ingeborg Bachmann - Someone who was once me © Elliott Kreyenberg

Colour image of a woman with long blond hair sitting at the front of a car with the door open and smoking a cigarette Regina Schilling: Ingeborg Bachmann - Someone who was once me © Elliott Kreyenberg

As the centenary year of Ingeborg Bachmann comes to an end, we are delighted to partner with the Austrian Cultural Forum to present Regina Schilling’s poetic new documentary, in which Sandra Hüller brings the celebrated writer vividly to life.

The screening will be introduced by Dr Andrea Capovilla, Director of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture.

In this poetic exploration, director Regina Schilling invites the audience to witness the making of art: Sandra Hüller approaches the life of Ingeborg Bachmann over the course of an imagined day, giving her words a compelling physical presence. Through an intricate tapestry of improvised dramatic scenes, archival treasures, interviews, and Bachmann’s own writings, the film traces the author’s key stages of life, from her wartime childhood in Carinthia in Austria and her rise to prominence within Group 47 to her final days in Rome. The journey is shaped by complex relationships with Paul Celan, Hans Werner Henze, and Max Frisch, as well as an unrelenting struggle to forge a radical language of her own amid the tensions between public acclaim and existential crisis. A fragmentary portrait emerges of an artist who, throughout her life, wrote against silence, injuries, and the identities imposed on her by others.

Austria / Germany 2026, colour & b/w, 95 mins., with English subtitles.
Directed by Regina Schilling. With Sandra Hüller.
Black and white photo of a white woman with blond chin-length hair looking outsight the frame to the right

Ingeborg Bachmann 1969 | © Renate von Mangoldt



 

Andrea Capovilla

Andrea Capovilla is the director of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature and Culture at the University of London. She teaches and researches in the areas of German language literature and film and also has a special interest in the works and lives of non-canonical women writers. Most recently she edited Marlen Haushofer: Texte und Kontexte (2022) and Reading Bachmann Now (2024).

 

Regina Schilling

Regina Schilling, born 1962, lives and works in Cologne and Berlin. She studied Literary Studies and Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Cologne, after which she worked as a press officer at the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch. She has been working as a freelancer since 1997. From 2000 to 2023 she was involved in programming for the International Literature Festival lit.COLOGNE, and works as a documentary filmmaker. Her films have earned her numerous awards, including the Grimme Prize, the German Television Award, and the 3Sat Documentary Film Prize.

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