Tributary

A few years ago, a Swiss film student named Anja Schwyzer was kidnapped during a trip to Brazil. She decided to make a documentary about this experience and the depression that followed. In the film, she introduces her loved ones, who tell us about the girl she used to be and the disturbed, suicidal woman she became.
The form is experimental. Firstly because the viewers feel directly addressed, as if they experienced the trauma themselves, as the relatives talk to the filmmaker. "You kept saying life wasn't worth living, that you'd be better off dead, things like that." This really hits home. Secondly, the film is original because it alternates interview excerpts with blurry, almost monochrome Super 8 images. Like abstract paintings, the images give an impression of the other existential level Anja found herself on during her depression. The contrast with the interviews in a studio, with a dull grey background and ruthless lighting, couldn't be greater. The viewer is constantly swung back and forth between "being" and "not wanting to be," making the filmmaker's depression palpable.