There is a sense of wasted time in the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival title Anima – My Father’s Dresses [+lire aussi :
interview : Uli Decker
fiche film], or maybe of wasted love. Director Uli Decker couldn’t really reach her father when he was alive, she says. Now, after his death, he is haunting her – probably because she lost her parent twice, in a way. When he suddenly passed away (due to a stupid prank gone wrong, one that even made the evening news), it was revealed that he was a transvestite – something his two daughters never got to see. Just like that, the dad she knew all her life was gone, and for good, so who do you even miss?

Decker is not a child any more, so instead of feeling betrayed or embarrassed, as some families do in such cases, she’s just sorry that his secret had kept them apart. It is suggested that keeping it a mystery for so long (her father, a teacher in a Bavarian town, started to dress in women’s clothes in around 1946) turned him into a guarded, reserved, perhaps also deeply unhappy person. As his wife and girls look back on their daily life, there are mentions of him seeming absent-minded a little too often and a “depressive” mood in the house. Predictably, his religious wife thought it was her fault; his daughters missed some kind of tender connection. By making a film about him, Decker might finally get to know him – it seems like a natural next step.

As you might expect, not everyone is thrilled about it. “Why does everyone have to know?” says one person, a crucifix hanging in the background, noting that people still remember him “positively”. But it’s too late, and all the boxes are finally ready to be unpacked – quite literally, as Decker actually starts going through her father’s belongings. There are diaries, but also pretty shoes and old make-up. Eventually, she puts on the wig and the lipstick, and transforms into the same woman her father wanted to see in the mirror. It’s fitting – she also feels like another person in heels.

Talk about irony here: a tomboy growing up, she didn’t want to be a girl. Not under these conditions. She wanted to wear trousers, not dresses, and one day ambitiously decided to become a pope. It’s interesting, seeing old childhood photographs of her dressed up as various men, moustaches drawn on her tiny face, when her father dreamt of doing the exact opposite – of “transcending the masculine role”, as he called it. Even when his first daughter was born, apparently, with the most important moments always taking a back seat.

The film starts in wobbly fashion somehow, with blurry shots of tarot cards coming off as a tad kitschy, but once Decker returns to the world of her childhood, creating collages out of old snaps, she finds her footing again. Anima… morphs into a tale about gender and identity, and (despite being very modest) it delivers its message: maybe there are many different beings inside of us, so why would we limit ourselves? Obviously, many things are still left unsaid – her father can’t answer her questions. But she finds some solace, some peace, happily dancing in the mountain meadow like it’s The Sound of Music again. She also seems to find him somehow.

Anima – My Father’s Dresses was produced by Germany’s Flare Film, with ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel on board as a co-producer.