The film "Die Geträumten" is about love and hate, and about the right and wrong words. At its heart are Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, who met in postwar Vienna. Their correspondence forms the basis of the script.
Two young actors, Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp, meet in a recording studio to read from it. The dramatically fluctuating emotions in the letters—ranging from ecstasy to fear of loss, delight to terror, closeness to estrangement—rub off on the actors. But they also have fun, argue, smoke, and talk about tattoos and music. Whether it’s love back then or love today, whether it’s a staged production or a documentary: where the boundaries blur, the heart of the film beats.

The dramatic, intoxicating, yet infinitely sad love story between Bachmann and Celan begins in 1948, when she is 22 and he is 27, and ends with Celan’s suicide in Paris in 1971. For Ingeborg Bachmann, he is the great love of her life, and yet she never stops seeing him as a stranger—and perhaps even fearing him a little: a Jew from Czernowitz whose parents perished in the Holocaust, while she herself has never experienced anything of the sort. She loves him and comes up against boundaries—her own and his. Things aren’t always pleasant in these gripping letters. In a moment of doubt, she asks: “Are we merely the ones who are dreamed of?”

Austria 2016, 92 minutes, FSK: 0

In a poetic exploration, director Regina Schilling invites the audience to witness the creation of art: actress Sandra Hüller delves into the life of Ingeborg Bachmann over the course of an imaginary day, lending her words a haunting presence. Through an artful interweaving of improvised scenes, archival treasures, interviews, and Bachmann’s own texts, the film traces the author’s key life stages—from her childhood during the war in Carinthia, to her rise as a star of Group 47, to her final days in Rome. Her path is marked by her complicated relationships with Paul Celan, Hans Werner Henze, and Max Frisch, and by an unyielding struggle to forge her own radical language amid public fame and existential crises.

On the occasion of Ingeborg Bachmann’s 100th birthday, Regina Schilling succeeds in creating a sensual and intellectual exploration of one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. Through Sandra Hüller’s powerful performance and masterful archival montages, Bachmann’s linguistic power becomes immediately tangible on the big screen. 

Germany 2026, 95 minutes, FSK: pending

When Ingeborg Bachmann and the Swiss writer Max Frisch met in Paris in 1958, it marked the beginning of a passionate and destructive love story. For four years, the two were locked in a tumultuous relationship that began in Paris and took them via Zurich to Rome. But artistic disagreements and Max Frisch’s consuming jealousy began to gradually erode their harmony.

Even years later, Ingeborg Bachmann cannot let go of the memory of her love for Max Frisch. On a trip to the desert, she tries to come to terms with her relationship with him and slowly detach herself from it.

CH/A/LUX/D 2023, 111 minutes, FSK: 12