Storytelling as a tireless, resistant, deeply feminist practice. Telling one’s own story, telling what all too often no one wants to hear. Maria Caesar has never stopped telling. About speaking and not speaking at the right moment. About fascism and resistance. As a feminist and communist resistance fighter, she dedicated herself to the anti-fascist struggle until her death in 2017. In a dense arrangement, Barbara Wilding and her editor Maria Otter combine archive recordings with conversations about the sustained impact of this narrative practice in the now. Departing from the question “Wos tur I?” – in English: What can I do now? – which she was confronted with in the 1930s in light of burgeoning fascism in Styria, Maria Caesar narrates herself in the film, across different times, moments, and contexts. As a contemporary witness over a Fanta and chips surrounded by young people, in a television interview, drinking wine spritzers with comrades, and in her different roles in personal and political surroundings. A picture unfolds of a fighter who leaves no doubt that the urgency of the ongoing struggle against fascism and the need to tell stories about the unspeakable will remain forever.
Credits
Script: Maria Otter, Barbara Wilding
Camera: Britta Isabella Lang, Sigrid Nagele, Miriam Raggam-Alji, Miae Son, Barbara Wilding
Editing: Maria Otter
Music: Vinzenz Schwab
Co-Director: Miriam Raggam-Alji
Production: Barbara Wilding
