DAS THEATER IM SUCHER

Ruth Walz is the most important theater photographer of our time. Her photographs have set standards for decades. The film follows her during rehearsals in Salzburg, Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence, Neustrelitz and Berlin. The special closeness she has built up with the various directors and actors over her 50 years of work, characterize her unique position within the theater.

At a young age, she broke out of the bourgeois world of shipowners and merchants in Bremen to then train as a single mother to become a photographer in Berlin. Her photographs still shape the collective memory of the epochal era of the Berlin Schaubühne in the 70s and 80s. There she also met the actor Bruno Ganz – the love of her life. Venice was the ideal refuge for this discreet partnership away from the public eye. The film alternates between observations of her actual participation in rehearsals and conversations with the artists involved. Her photographs act as a dramaturgical corrective and allow us a glimpse into her vast archive. The film is far more than just a portrait of an obsessive artist, but also a tableau of the theater of our time.

Thomas Ladenburger © Thomas Ladenburger photos © Thomas Ladenburger, Ruth Walz