Mother's Mask

Using motifs from Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Christoph Schlingensief outlines the drama revolving around a noble family in the Ruhr area. With Mother’s Mask, Schlingensief leads the hated narrative cinema ad absurdum by applying and overstretching its regularity. Through deliberate ridiculousness, he reduces his tragicomedy to the level of a daily soap opera.

Christoph Schlingensief was born on October 24, 1960 in Oberhausen, as the son of a pharmacist and a pediatric nurse. He made his first 8mm film in 1968 at the age of 8, and has since completed more than 20 films, more than any other German director of his generation. Since the beginning of the 90s he was mainly active in the theater, at the opera and organized artistic activities. Christoph Schlingensief passed away in August 2010.