The Dreamed Path

Der traumhafte Weg

Trailer

Directed by Angela Schanelec

Germany, 2016

Drama

87
German
Portuguese & 5 more

Angela Schanelec: Showing without Telling

Synopsis

Theres and Kenneth are young, when they first meet in their summer holidays in Greece. They fall in love with each other but can’t prevent the forthcoming separation. Thirty years later, in another country—another couple. Ariane leaves her husband David, because she doesn’t love him anymore.

Our take

Through Bressonian fragmentation, the Berlin School auteur Angela Schanelec delivers a puzzling, elliptical anti-love story, and keeps challenging our notion of narrative with her radical, quietly masterful filmmaking.

The Dreamed Path Directed by Angela Schanelec

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Awards & Festivals

Locarno International Film Festival

2016

Toronto International Film Festival

2016

International Film Festival Rotterdam

2017

Mar del Plata International Film Festival

2016

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Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Critics reviews

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A ceaseless happening, allowing only for the collapsing, ever-sinking gazes of the characters and the camera pulsing in this blackout of a film, until all that remains is our helplessness in the face of life. Angela Schanelec’s The Dreamed Path is one of the best films of the year, a film about healing and change, both of which are invisibly stripped in the images.

Patrick Holzapfel

May 28, 2018

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Every now and then, it’s not wrong to ponder on the nature of emotions in cinema. Why does an image arouse an emotion? In Angela Schanelec’s cinema in general, and in The Dreamed Path in particular, the flow of emotions is unleashed by a radicalization of the sensitive experience. Commotion is physical, more than narrative, and it demands a specific attention.

Roger Koza

May 21, 2018

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The ‘dreamed’ path is ultimately a trope – as if out of a Robert Frost poem, ‘The road not taken.’ We are invited to see the two women as reiterations, and to commune with a desire, oft expressed in Schanelec’s oeuvre, to be someone else. Schanelec’s deliberate taciturnity leaves small gestures and objects – a cap fallen in the midst of a fainting spell, a piece of a jagged shard, or a shoe dropped in haste, or despair – to speak for persons who can’t or won’t communicate openly.

Ela Bittencourt

March 15, 2017

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What are people saying?

Korial's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
Korial

In my humble opinion, Angela Schanelec is among the greatest directors of our times. She exquisitely balances her discourse and artistic vision with those of the masters of the past, managing to present an equilibrated, 'lightweight' but not superficial, picture of Life. Humans' gestures and emotions are surrounded by an halo of innocence, purity, sanctity, and, inevitably, mystery.
August 14, 2019 12:34
- 8
- 0
Jason's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
Jason

MUBI's "take" promises "Bressonian fragmentation," but stops short of calling it like it is: w/ THE DREAMED PATH, Schanelec has comprehensively assimilated the formal sublimity of the master. The movie feels like a cross between FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER and THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (w/ which it shares the slightly uncommon ratio of 1.37/1), but w/ the networked sensibility of L'ARGENT. More than I would ever dare ask for.
January 24, 2019 19:03
- 2
- 0
AugusteB's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
AugusteB

All is just loosely hold together. By putting it into frame it becomes a story or just an image to follow. A cinematic path. A dream. I loved it.
January 24, 2019 18:43
- 5
- 0
josé neves's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
josé neves

PC. In one scene, one of the characters has a book open in a poem entitled "The form that can't be writen". Exactly like the writing presented here, without an idiosyncratic form, which, in fact, Schanelec only has at the level of themes' and characters' writing, similar between films. The form written here is borrowed and never achieves its own way. "Marseille" is still her best written film.
June 01, 2018 14:25
- 1
- 0
FilmEdie's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
FilmEdie

Quietly solid filmmaking. Measured, rhythmic, longer takes set the film's precise pace from the opening shots, so that even while you’re still wondering if it feels a bit contrived/over-stylized, it's already pulled you in. And to where? Where did we go? I’m not sure. But I knew while I was there... Some wordless human empathy; sensuous & poignant. An ambitious, artful, compelling, skillfully made & well acted film.
January 24, 2019 19:04
- 3
- 4
Slow Immersion's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
Slow Immersion

Formally one of her most interesting - during the first segment I wondered if maybe too formal and wooden acting made it feel empty, but I feel this was possibly more due to the intentional nature of the characters being mentally limited. Second segment much more interesting and like her earlier efforts.
January 24, 2019 18:56
- 3
- 0
Il secondo maestro del revolver's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
Il secondo maestro del revolver

4.5 non mi sembra sia stato apprezzato molto, ma a me è piaciuto anche di più di alcuni film della schanelec
January 26, 2018 17:25
- 1
- 0
Eric Rucker's rating of the film The Dreamed Path
Eric Rucker

I do not feel like I can fairly rate this film after only one viewing, but I want to say that I enjoyed it and am intrigued by how it operated. Without reservation I can say there were some powerful images, the construction of the narrative was wonderful, as was the flickering between Film, Life, Film. My reservation is the nature of the slowness and how strongly it pulled at the fabric. A 2nd viewing might fix me.
June 03, 2018 12:26
- 0
- 0