In the organizer's words:

Caché
FR/AT/DE/IT 2005 | 115 min. | OVR | D: Michael Haneke with Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil, Annie Girardot

Film series Latent Messages of Cinema, curated by Wolfgang M. Schmitt as part of Latent Space. Latent Spaces of Art, 14.11.2025 - 31.01.2026. A project of the Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf.

Latency also refers to a structure of presence with simultaneous or supposed absence: in Michael Haneke's drama Caché, a wealthy family anonymously receives video cassettes with video recordings of the entrance to their home. Conceivably harmless material, you might think. Is someone still there? The videos are messages from a past, not least a colonial one. What suddenly emerges, albeit belatedly, from the static, seemingly inconspicuous footage? A deeply irritating stroke of genius! (Wolfgang M. Schmitt)

Latent messages of the cinema

Latency in film is the hesitation before the answer, the pausing of the gaze. The selected films all convey latent messages. Latency turns the cinema into a space of waiting, in which meaning does not appear immediately, but arrives belatedly, but possibly at the right time. In this delay, time becomes perceptible - as tension, as promise, as a game with the invisible. Spaces of possibility open up for the audience's projections and fantasies. (Wolfgang M. Schmitt)