Who Killed Walter Benjamin...

Non-Fiction

Walter Benjamin died in 1940 after illegally crossing the Franco-Spanish border in a desperate attempt to escape the Nazis and reach the United States. "Who Killed Walter Benjamin…"

Status:

Complete

Walter Benjamin died in 1940 after illegally crossing the Franco-Spanish border in a desperate attempt to escape the Nazis and reach the United States.

"Who Killed Walter Benjamin…" proposes a 'Benjaminian' construction around his own death, articulating within its own narrative the problems derived from historical discourse and its construction.

The film features important scholars, thinkers, historians and artists such as Stéphane Hessel, Dani Karavan, Stéphane Mosès, Gary Smith, Rolf Tiedemann, Patrick Von Zur Mühlen, Bernd Witte and Erdmut Wizisla. Interviews with the villagers reveal the elusive memory of these past events and evoke the ghost of fascism in Spain's history.

The documentary received an award from the European Association for Jewish Culture and has been screened at film festivals and international events. According to the Washington Jewish Film Festival"this is probably the first intellectual-historical film noir". The documentary is "seductive and illuminating."

In 2011, a DVD of the film was released as part of the prestigious film collection curated by Cahiers du Cinema Spain.

Who Killed Walter Benjamin... not just a reconstruction of a death but the living portrait of the scene of the crime.

(Spain/Netherlands/Germany, 2005, 73 min.)

A production by

Medianimació

Milagros Producciones

In co-production with

Televisió de Catalunya

Joodse Omroep (Nik Media)

Goethe Institut

With the support of

Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals (ICEC)

Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM)

Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM)

European Association for Jewish Culture

Fundació Baruch Spinoza

"Mauas strikes a balance between gathering information and intimate personal reflection"

"This film is an event, because it reveals how the mysterious death of a German thinker converts a little village of the Catalan Pyrenees to a crossroads of European history."

"With persistence, Mauas seizes new relevant details from witnesses of that time which until now have been ignored by international Benjamin research"

"Mauas lets speak those who heard the story from others, those who lived through that time and remember (…) Walter Benjamin is always present in the film, although his image hardly appears. He lives in others, in their memories or in their imagination…"

"The result is a film noir that moves between classic documentary and video art. In 'Who Killed Walter Benjamin…' not only is the death of the writer reconstructed, but 'the crime scene' is also recreated"

"In a documentary with echoes of Mulholland Drive, director David Mauas narrates his personal, at times obsessive, investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of the German philosopher. Many testimonies interweave — villagers and specialists — pointing to one conclusion: it cannot be proven that Benjamin committed suicide"

"David Mauas is a worthy disciple of Walter Benjamin. 'Who Killed Walter Benjamin' is not only a documentary about this illustrious and unclassifiable thinker, but first and foremost a work made with a profound knowledge of Benjamin's writing and stylistic virtuosity. It is the product of a hybrid genre between pure documentation and video art artifice, which at times manages to translate Benjamin's own narrative work into visual form"

Team:

Direction

David Mauas

Screenplay

David Mauas
Joan Ripollès

Production

Miquel Álvarez
David Mauas

TVC Executive Producer

Jordi Ambrós

NIK Media Executive Producer

Annette Betsalel

Production Coordination

Esther Prim
Montserrat Guiu

Director of Photography

Rachel Rusinek

Sound

César Fernández
Shinya Kitamura

Editing and Post-Production

Pau Valiente
Victor Vidal

Original Music

Xavier Maristany

CAST (in order of appearance)

Stéphane Hessel – Friend of Walter Benjamin

Rolf Tiedemann – Editor, Walter Benjamin Complete Works

Benjamin Patrick von zur Mühlen – Historian

Santiago Vancells – Portbou Physician

Alfons Romero – Gunsmith and Historian

Teresa Puig – Portbou Tourism Office

Ferran Sánchez Agustí – Historian

Joan Gubert – Portbou Chronicler

Francesc Rosa – Former Customs Controller, Portbou

Antonio Lasierra – Portbou

Marian Roman – Portbou

Isidro Gubert – Portbou

Natividad Peral – Portbou

Pere Calderer – Portbou

Narciso Alba – Professor of Literature and Art History

Gary Smith – Editor and writer

Bernd Witte – Professor of German Language and Literature Germánicas

Anna Caixàs – Former employee of Hostal Comercio Portbou

Antonio Cordero Martínez – Head of the Immigration and Documentation Unit, Portbou

Juan Ramón Capella – Professor of Philosophy of Law

Lluís Novell – Portbou

Narcís Bardalet – Forensic Physician

Cuca Gorgot – Daughter of Dr. Gorgot

Simó Granollers – Former employee, Hotel Terminus

Josep Valls – Portbou

Pere Roura – Portbou

Francina Alsina – Graphologist and Judicial Handwriting Expert

Xavier Vicens Codina – Vicens Funeral Home

Felíx de Azúa – Professor of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts

Stéphane Mosès – Professor of German and Comparative Literature

Erdmut Wizisla – Walter Benjamin Archive

Dani Karavan – Sculptor “Passages”, Homage to Walter Benjamin, Portbou

Interested in this project?

Enquire about exhibition rights, screenings and Q&A sessions.