Trauma, dreams & doc film

How does the psyche work when an individual deals with trauma? And how can documentary film help to retrieve forgotten and inaccessible memories?

The experimental documentary "Three Dreams" that I shot in collaboration with a survivor of the terror attack in Nice, France (2016) explores this unconscious life of the mind in a sensual-somatic portrait of trauma.

Run run run. out of my way get outta here. don't move sshh shh what do we do now be quiet are there gunshots outside what's happening does anyone know what's going on? am i dead i must be dead. how can i enter my body again. please let me out.

What comes together in a traumatic experience and its aftermath is a desire to understand enormous pain. Something so violent has happened to the victim that the mind excludes it from conscious memory. At the same time, however, it tries to go back and grasp what can no longer be grasped. The victim is often caught in an endless loop of hallucinations, dreams and flashbacks that are painful and haunting.

Film is special as it allows us to reconstruct the traumatic memory of dreams and hallucinations in the very same temporality. Sudden cuts, time & space jumps, and surrealism can be imitated like in no other art form. This offers a filmmaker the change to bring victim and audience closer together.

"Three Dreams" is a search for understanding, empathy and processing that invites victims and spectator to participate.