20/02/2010

Berlin-born filmmaker Michael Stock, known for his 1993 cult feature Prince in Hell, turns the camera to himself and his immediate film for the documentary Postcard to Daddy. The film is part of the Panorama Dokumente section at the Berlin Film Festival and was awarded the Siegessaüle Readers’ Award on Friday during the ceremony of the Teddy Awards, the festival’s prizes for GLTB-themed films.

The documentary retraces Michael’s youth and the years of sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, who not only appears as the addressee in the title but also, towards the end, in the film itself. Stock also sketches a portrait of his life as a gay and HIV-positive man severely damaged by what has happened to him as a child and adolescent.

Through interviews with Michael’s now grown-up siblings, who were unaware that their father was molesting their younger brother, and his mother, who has since started working in the field of counselling, Stock sketches an incisive portrait of the effects his revelations have had on the other family members and also his French boyfriend. His sister breaks off all contact with her father as a result, and his brother is unsure of how to reconcile the loving father he knew with the apparent monster he was to his younger sibling.

Made with very modest means, the film will not win any awards for technical excellence, but the unflinchingly honest and never exploitative tone turns this very personal story into a gripping account of the far-reaching consequences of child abuse for the perpetrator, the victim and those in their immediate vicinity.

In Berlin, the director expressed the hope that his honesty and courage to talk about what has happened to him, which took him many years to build up, will help others victims and make the subject, still often wilfully ignored, something that can be discussed openly.