THE TRUTH

2008-09-10T20:00:00.004+02:00

THE TRUTH - Trailer Online!

2008-03-28T17:02:00.004+01:00

1'-Trailer in higher Resolution: Please click HERE

Directed by Daniel Hoesl.

Produced as an European Film Conspiracy by Daniel Hoesl, Aleksandr Kheyfets, Leif Lafferty Gebauer.

Sounddesign and Soundediting by Gerhard Daurer.

Mixing and Mastering by Martin Löcker.

With Malia Bendi-Merad, Dylan Davey, Jessy Chenal, Simon Miller, Jane Titus, Tereza Degroff,...

Funded by the the governments of Land Salzburg and Land Niederösterreich.

Synopsis

2008-03-28T16:43:00.000+01:00

THE TRUTH Outline:

Dylan can't remember what life is like outside his basement. Malia keeps him in her basement like a toy. On her perverted quest for Dylan's „inner truth“ she has lost reality, just like reality has lost Dylan. Dylan suffers in loneliness and suppression – until the door opens and the truth comes to light.

THE TRUTH Synopsis:

Malia is an opera-singer and artist from France, living in New York City. Her boyfriend Jessy is a professional boxer. Their relationship is loaded with aggression and suppression. Malia's world seems lost: on the surface she is trying to keep her smile. On the other hand the world has lost Dylan: he is kept in the basement by Malia. We don't know how long he has been there, nobody can tell how he got there, even he himself doesn't remember. Malia projects her relationship and career-related problems onto Dylan, who is trying to keep his soul alive in the silence of the basement. Over the years he has gotten used to his situation – he doesn't know if life is better outside: homo homini lupus.

Malia is obsessed by truth. Her art projects are related to truth or truth-seeking. For instance, she collects the word „truth“ in all languages, videotaping strangers saying the word into her camera. She also pays people around the globe to „deliver“ a block of ice into the sea, which, like fading truth, melts in the water, and to document that with a Polaroid camera. These Polaroid photos appear in the movie alongside a voice-over about fading truth.

Dylan is Malia's pet project. Malia keeps Dylan in her basement, seeking his „inner truth“. That is how Dylan became the object and victim of this obscure relationship of power. Dylan has to learn the word „truth“ in many languages and Malia tests his knowledge – Dylan is punished for every mistake that he makes. The Stockholm-Syndrome: The Truth is a love story.

Nobody misses Dylan. He is trapped in the basement - Malia doesn't lock the door: when Dylan opens it he does not run away, he goes back down into the dungeon. Strange sounds coming from the basement? Malia answers: neighbors and their freaky children.

This just can't be true. It's a movie. But reality teaches us to fear Dylan's destiny, as the story is plausible and explosive. And you, dear reader, you cannot know what your neighbor hides in his basement.

There is just one who knows: Simon. Or is it you?
Playing the funny game until Dylan disappears. Then, the game is over -

The Truth is: the truth is the end of truth. Ask Simon.

Truth takes a vacation: She has fun.

Daniel Hoesl, Director of The Truth

2008-03-28T16:36:00.004+01:00

Daniel Hoesl was born 1982. He studied in Salzburg (MMA) and Prague (FAMU). After successfully exploding some buildings in the art circuit his interest in aesthetics lead his way to filmmaking where he has worked for directors such as Ulrich Seidl, Michael Glawogger and Benjamin Heisenberg. Currently Mr. Hoesl is working on his next feature film with the support of the Austrian Screenwriter's Forum through their ScriptLab.

Director's Statement:

The basic and central concern of this movie is the role of the women on one side in the traditional role of the suppressed, on the other hand in the role of the supressor. And also there is the interest in the question of realities: can this be true?

It was Gilles Deleuze's philosophy for cinema that made me an obsessed cinephile and filmmaker. At Prague's film academy FAMU, where I studied for a very short time, I was a frequent visitor of the cinematheque, where I wandered through the Œvres of Bresson, Pasolini, Ozu, Godard, Resnais, and Duras. Then, back at my home-university in Salzburg I wrote my thesis „The Minor Image“ which deals with the philosophy of Deleuze/Guattari's „Minor Literature“ - also I am researching films by Resnais, Godard, Marker, Farocki and Jem Cohen. Parallel to that I created a video piece that underlines my thesis and for which I traveled around great parts of the world from Moscow to Los Angeles; the title is „Die Wirklichkeit“, which I would translate as „The Reality“, and which also is the counter-piece for „The Truth“.

No compromises were allowed during the production process: this was the premise that made this project possible. No producer, no film funding institution would have offered their trust to this project with the two-page-concept and our crew without reputation.

No matter if in painting, in music, on theatre-stages, or on film: I was always only interested in the extreme-poles of art. I hope to be able to finish this project in the mood of the extraordinary pope-paintings of Francis Bacon, the strictness and suffering of György Ligeti's music, and with the power of deconstruction of a theatre writer-director like Heiner Müller. „The Truth“ is clearly placed into the context of progressive cinéma d'autheur.

I do not care for social romanticism nor am I a moralist. A film is relevant and interesting for me simply when it makes me think – I do not picture movies as escapism. Like the most beautiful sunset, I desperately watch the apocalypse from a cozy distance without a camera movement, without a silent sigh of fear, smiling and sipping a glass of cognac.

Cinema Verité

2008-03-28T16:34:00.001+01:00

„Cinema Verité is the accountant's truth“, Werner Herzog.

In one sentence the plot of „The Truth“ could be put as follows: A woman keeps a human pet in her basement in a sick game of love and suppression until the person in the basement disappears. But the movie does not end there. The question is: did it really happen? Simon, who is a side character, but who also is the key-character, delivers the catharsis with his appearances in the movie, which will question mise-en-scene, the medium of film and filmreality as such.

Кино-Правда, Cinema-Truth, is constructed filmreality and this reality is questioned by the film itself. The reflexion of truth in the medium, the fact that there is no ultimate, general truth is part of the movie. This is not only formally the case: „Truth“ becomes part of storytelling, where all of Malia's art projects deal with the subject: an ice-block melts into the sea like truth would fade away in an ocean. Furthermore, most people in the film are not real actors, but play themselves in an artificial setting with dramatized actions, very often at their place of residence. The couple in the movie, Malia and Jessy, is a couple in real life too.

Cinéma Verité – Truth is a lie.

„Truth“ is based on reality – Reality Fiction.

Crew - European Film Conspiracy

2008-03-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

Aleksandr Kheyfets, New York Line Producer + Assistant Director:

Aleksandr Kheyfets was born in Moscow in 1979, on the coldest day of the decade. Until age 13 he divided his time between Moscow, the Siberian town of Tomsk, and southern Estonia. Then America: Boston, Chicago, New York. At the University of Chicago he received degrees in linguistics and psychology and met the “Truth” Project actor Simon Miller, who in a fit of provoked anger threw chairs at him. After working for several years as an Associate Producer on MTV’s True Life documentary series in New York, Mr. Kheyfets completed the film-directing program at the Prague Film Academy (FAMU), where he met and collaborated with both Leif Lafferty-Gebauer and Daniel Hoesl.

Mr. Kheyfets has directed a number of independent short films, translated plays for theaters in the U.S. and Russia, and has made anti-government commercials in Tajikistan. He currently works in Estonia, where he is directing a feature length love-hate comedy and a documentary about unattainable dreams.

Leif Lafferty-Gebauer, Additional Camera – Most Boy:

Leif was born during the month of September in a dilapidated shack on the shores of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Always transient, his family moved well over ten times within the first ten years of his life. Leaving home at the age of seventeen, Leif traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe as a founding member of a collaborative noise project based out of Berlin. For the most part self-educated, Leif has practically lived within the library of every major art and design school in the United States and Europe.

Relocating back to the Midwest in the year of 2000, Leif worked closely with several Minneapolis arts organizations over the next four year period:

West Bank School of Art & Culture
The Bedlam Theater
Independent Feature Project (IFP-Minneapolis/St. Paul)
Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (MN Film Arts)

Returning to Europe in the Fall of 2004, Leif studied in the Czech Republic for a year under Macedonian film director, Ivo Trajkov at the Academy of Film, Television and Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU).

At the moment, Leif lives in Brooklyn, New York, studies at The Fashion Institute of Technology, and works for The Anthology Film Archives.

Cast

2008-03-28T16:01:00.000+01:00

Malia Bendi-Merad

Born in Algeria, where she studied ballet for ten years, Malia Bendi-Merad later moved to her mother’s native France. She earned a Diploma in Pharmacy from the Université René Descartes in Paris before her singing talent was discovered, and she pursued her musical studies in the United States. Few young singers launch their international careers so auspiciously as Franco-Algerian soprano Malia Bendi-Merad. In 2003, while still a student at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, she made her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, followed by another engagement with that superb ensemble, sang a critically acclaimed recital on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s prestigious series, and received festival and operatic invitations in quick succession. Just this year, she was chosen by Maestro Pierre Boulez to sing again with the Cleveland Orchestra as a Flower Maiden in Parsifal, both in Cleveland and in her February 2004 Carnegie Hall debut. In April she made her Opéra de Lyon debut with conductor Marc Minkowski in Rameau’s Les Boréades, a work she sings next year in her Strasbourg debut. The string of successes continues with her first appearance with conductor Jeanette Sorrell and the Akron Symphony, singing Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate and Coronation Mass; her return to the Cleveland Orchestra as the Sandman and Dew Fairy in Hänsel und Gretel under the baton of Maestro Franz Welser-Möst; followed by Handel’s Messiah with the highly regarded early-music ensemble, Apollo’s Fire. Worked with Composers such as: Marc Minkowski, Pierre Boulez, Franz Welser-Möst, Emmanuelle Haim, Jeannette Sorrell, Grant Llewellyn, Imre Pallo, Richard Egarr, Pierre André Calade, Philip Walsh, Michael Sponseller, Robert Porco, Tim Weiss The Wall Street Journal, NYC: „Ms Merad [..] with a perfectly placed, expressive soprano […], proved a singer to watch”.

Dylan Davey

Dylan was born and raised on a farm in Maine before moving to New York at the calling of a powerful instinct. Also, New York was where Dylan went to college, so he would have moved there even if he had not had a gut level impulse. Dylan graduated with a B.F.A in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts, at NYU, from the experimental theatre wing studio program. After graduation Dylan continued to work in the realm of Theater, working with M.F.A students at Columbia University alongside director Anne Bogart, as well as acting in off-Broadway plays and in films. In order to make money, Dylan also worked outside the world of art, but these jobs are not worth mentioning. Dylan is currently shooting a feature film bound for festivals, in which he plays a nerdy, socially awkward graphic designer who is constantly apologizing for everything. Dylan is also currently working on an off-Broadway play which will premiere in May at Richard Foreman's Ontological Theater, and in this he is playing a demented, crippled orphan intellectual in the post- apocalyptic future. This is a particularly interesting show, in that it is dirty, and subversive material, which will be performed in a church - the St. Marks church on Bowery. Dylan enjoyed working with director Daniel Hoesl on the „Truth“ Project, although the enjoyment came from a sense of artistic accomplishment, and not from being particularly comfortable during the shooting, which would have been highly unnecessary.

Dylan is an actor, writer, student, fisherman, photographer, carpenter and romantic individualist. He loves and lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY.

Jessy Chenal

Born in Vosges, France, he later moved to Strasbourg. Worked as a truck driver and has a history of professional boxing. After failing in that business he worked in a Hotel as a Concierge. There he met and invited Malia to go jogging with him – she joined: they fell in love. Now he lives together with Malia in New York City, trying to figure out how to make a living.

Jessy likes Sex.

Simon Miller

Born in Nevada, Miller finished his studies at the University of Chicago. After college he moved to New York City where he lives both as a man and a woman: he is a professional transvestite. With his mentor Paul Rackley, Simon set up PRSM Advertising and Creative Service, which is a boutique ad agency focused on the Men's Fashion Industry.

Simon Miller works for Names such as...
Ralph Lauren, Valentino, Joseph Abboud, Perry Ellis, Mossimo, Lanvin, Ungaro, Avirex, Louis Feraus, Geoffrey Beene, Van Heusen, Claiborne, Arista, New York University.

His work has been published in...
Vogue, Elle, Esquire, Gentlemen's Quartely, Details, The New York Times, People, M.R. Magazine, Modern Bridge, Men's Fitness, Men's Health...

His studio is on 29th St in Manhattan and was one of the shooting locations for the „Truth“.

Simon Miller is now enrolled in an acting program at Stella Adler Acting Conservatory at NYU and can soon be seen on stage in Beckett's „Waiting for Godot“.

Jane Titus

Jane Titus was born in Richmond, California. She was raised in California and Washington State. She went to college in both Washington (University of Washington) and Oregon (Reed College). She received her degree in theatre from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Since graduating, Jane has worked as an actress and teacher of theatre in Oregon, Texas, Washington and New York. She has served as a resident teacher in a number of youth facilities, teaching young adults about theatre through improvisation and Shakespeare. She co-founded a classical theatre company in Dallas, Texas dedicated to producing historical works in their original context. She has taught in grade schools, high schools and colleges. Throughout all this teaching and producing work she also has performed steadily as an actress, both on stage and in film. Her favorite roles of note are Medea in 2 different productions and adaptations of the play, Cassius in Julius Caesar, as well as Bolingbroke in Richard II and Henry IV parts 1 and 2.

Dana Lewman

Dana Lewman is a freelance artist living in the East Village in New York City. She resides in a tiny room above a restaurant. This room offers refuge from the chaos of the city, providing a safe haven despite its diminutive size, and is featured in one of the scenes in the „Truth“ Project. When Dana is not busy collaborating with foreign filmmakers, she works on miscellaneous art projects such as covering cars in denim, stringing 10,000 seashells into a hanging sculpture for a midtown restaurant, or painting lofts vibrant colors for the sets of New York based reality television shows. She also enjoys visiting the New York Earth Room to commune with the dirt, riding the subways to the end of their lines to see what's there, and partaking in afternoon cocktails.

Tereza Novakova-Degroff

Tereza Novakova was born in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1981. She studied journalism and has worked for various publications. She lived on a boat in Memphis and is currently writing and taking photos in Brooklyn. She works in a children store where she sells toys. She never had any acting aspirations.

Christopher Anderson

Christopher Anderson was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1975. Mr. Anderson is a musician/artist currently living in Brooklyn. He has recorded albums and toured throughout the U.S. under the name "Ghost Exits".

Aymeric Dupré la Tour

Aymeric Dupré la Tour is a Starr Fellowship doctoral candidate at The Juilliard School. He serves as organist and music director at the Lutheran Church of the Epiphany in Hempstead, NY and is the piano accompanist at Suzuki on the Island.

After studying piano and music theory at the Conservatoire de Région de Lyon, Mr. Dupré la Tour studied organ in Paris with renowned virtuoso Pierre Pincemaille at the Conservatoire Claude Debussy, receiving the Premier Prix. In the mean time, he completed a master’s degree in earth sciences in Paris and worked for two years in Venezuela as a geologist for the French oil company Elf Aquitaine.

Determined to further his musical studies, he entered the Artist Diploma program in organ performance in Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1998, thanks to a Dean’s Talent Award. After graduation, he focused on playing the harpsichord and entered the Master’s Program in Historical Performance in Oberlin as a full scholarship student with Professor Lisa Goode Crawford. During his Oberlin years, he performed as a versatile collaborative keyboardist and also gained experience as a conductor. His recital of the Goldberg Variations was part of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute in 2003.

Playing the piano remains one of Aymeric Dupré la Tour’s greatest passions. He has been a staff accompanist at the Oberlin Conservatory (OH), Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory (OH), the Oberlin Flute Institute and the International School for Musical Arts in Niagara (Canada). At Juilliard, Aymeric Dupré la Tour teamed with violinist Jee Hae Lee for a year of enlightening chamber music courses with Jacob Lateiner, distinguished collaborator of Jascha Heifetz.

CONTACT INFORMATION

2008-03-10T23:43:00.002+01:00

For any inquiries please write your message to

truth@the-truth-movie.com
or call +43 676 921 79 19

SITE ONLINE

2007-11-24T04:17:00.002+01:00

Find information about the film project by the European Film Conspiracy.