Das Retirée or the last house of my father 2023

Directed by Julie Pfleiderer

If you were to design your dream house now that you're at the end of your life, what would it look like? This question from the filmmaker to her father, retired architect Karlhans Pfleiderer, is the starting point of Das Retirée or the last house of my father. Slowly but surely, the house takes form, first drawn on shifting layers of transparent paper, then glued into a scale model. Between the words and the gestures, the film of the daughter becomes the father’s last house, a space in which unspoken words, unfulfilled desires can appear, disclosing coping-mechanisms that have survived several generations.