In his debut feature screenwriter and director Sebastian Meise provocatively tackles one of the most delicate issues of contemporary Austrian society – paedophilia.
Bernhard finds an old letter to a prostitute written by his father, in which he instructs the woman to play the role of his daughter, Lydia. When the secret is revealed, father’s paedophilic tendencies are confirmed by a box he has long kept hidden, containing photographs of Lydia as a child. Coming to terms with the suppressed past, the family suddenly has to firmly define the boundary between parental love and depraved behaviour.
»The basic question in the film is where guilt begins, and pedosexuality, when considered in those terms, becomes a synonym for criminal thought. At what point should a society deny a person free will, and with that any opportunity for self-determination, and when does its obligation to intervene for the purpose of regulation begin? In our free and enlightened society, thinking fundamentally represents a morals-free zone, and no one can be punished for something that exists in their mind only. But what fascinated me about the theme of paedophilia was how this principle becomes shaky in certain cases.« (Sebastian Meise)
Sebastian Meise
Born in 1976 in Kitzbühel, Austria, Meise studied directing at the Vienna Film Academy. Prior to Still Life, his first feature, he directed the shorts Prises de vues, Random and Dämonen, which screened at a series of European film festivals. In 2011 he made his first documentary feature, Outing, which also revolves around the topic of paedophilia.