The cinema of Zurich-born Mathieu Seiler provokes two conflicting feelings. One is for and against it at the same time. Which, in fact, is exciting. His first feature film, Stefanies Geschenk (discovered at L'Étrange Festival in 1995) has a taste of Maladolescenza (Pier Giuseppe Murgia, 1977). We enter the thoughts of a tormented teenage girl creating a refuge and companions who, though they are imaginary, have a direct impact, nevertheless, on her reality. Very fast, we understand that the heroine is lost in the nightmare of Alice In Wonderland, and has to learn that appearances are deceptive. The tortuous ans surreal construction shows a real ambition and a willingness to count on the intelligence of the audience. These days, those are precious qualities. In Orgienhaus (2000) Seiler once again takes on the fairy tales, here the Little Red Riding Hood, to blur the thin frontier between fantasy and reality. Specialized in dream-like universes, he will have to wait twelve years to direct his third work of fiction, the enigmatic Der Ausflug, new version of a fairy story opposing the world of adults to the world of an unarmed child.
