Lukas Traber (Austria)

Cannes 2011

’No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the opposite.’ Federico Fellini

Movies grew on me when I was still very young. As a child I was already obsessed with Disney movies and other child flicks, but I remember how my real love for cinema came up as my father, who himself is cinephile, introduced me to the works of directors like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini and David Lynch. That gave me impressions of a completely new world I had never seen before. Watching these movies, being part of these alternative realities, surely changed my perception of the world around me. What I love about films, especially good ones, is that they not only can teach me new ways of viewing the world, they can also take me on an emotional ride, make me go through the same feelings as the characters inside it. When I write about movies I try to write about what they taught me or put me through and maybe do so to others, because of course, everyone perceives a movie a little differently. Orson Welles once said : “a film is a ribbon of dreams”. I think that phrase catches it pretty well. Movies are like re-watchable dreams you can share and talk about with others and like a dream they can stay with you for quite a while and make you feel and think differently of the world surrounding you.

Fellini may be right when he says that a critic can`t say more than the film itself, but I think sharing my thoughts about a movie with others makes it easier for me to listen to the films voice and therefore easier to understand what it has to say.