Caché

At the doorstep of the house — a videotape. Then another one. Someone is secretly watching the couple’s life: recording how they leave the house and come back, capturing their everyday routine. The recipient of these parcels — a TV host living a comfortable bourgeois life — is helpless against the unknown voyeur. It becomes clear: whoever is sending these recordings knows something about him that he would rather forget.

Haneke cleverly riffs on the nature of cinema as the pleasure of voyeurism — while at the same time turning his observations back against the viewer. This is not a detective story or a psychological drama, but a voyeuristic film that both glorifies the very act of voyeurism — and punishes it. In Hidden the viewer is not just an observer, but an accomplice, and that is perhaps the most unsettling part.

 After the film, we’ll brew some tea and share impressions. The meeting will be hosted by philosopher and film scholar (and cinema owner) Varya Vlasova.