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Biography Philip Koch Philip Koch was born 1982 in Munich. Graduating from high school in 2002, he completed several internships for Film and Television. Since 2003 he has been studying direction at Film School Munich, where his first short film "Paphos & Galatea" was awarded "Best Video Art" at Cyprus Int. Film festival. He as well works as a film critic for a German newspaper. 2005 he founded his film production company Philip Koch Filmproduktion GbR with which he has produced fiction and documentary films, which were successful at national and international Film festivals. His first feature film Picco was selected in Cannes Festival in 2010. Director's Note Lumen is a film about a woman who suffers from a disease most unbearable, mostly unheard of, but comprising a considerable amount of people affected: An allergy towards light. A disease that got publicity in Germany with the suicide of ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl's wife Hannelore Kohl - in her case, the disease got so extreme that even artificial light would do severe harm to the skin, hence forcing her to lead a life inside a completely darkened house. A state psychologically so strainful to her, but for her nearest ones as well, that it lead her to end her life. Always having that tragic incident in mind, it struck me why there is not a single film that seriously tries to deal with that particular ailing, although quite a lot people suffer from it. There reasons for this are yet obvious, as a sad necessity of the disease: It's a sickness existing only behind closed doors and shut windows - the patients who cannot go out anymore, get more and more isolated and consequently, hardly anyone knows about the harsh intricacies of that particular ailing, what a tremendous strain it is for all peple involved and how it affects the everyday life of all of them. My utmost intention in the making of LUMEN was to deliver to the audience an almost physical sense of what it means to suffer from such a disease - by beseeching the power of a strong and emotional story - a sister-sister- relationship - and by telling it with strong, poetic and highly atmospheric visuals. The stunning camera work of Stefan Linn allows the viewer - as the main protagonist - as good as never a sight of light, that is not harmful: So, on a big cinema screen, the light will even blind the audience in the cinema. But mostly, the spectator will live in darkness for almost 25 minutes and be entangled by the sombre and yet poetic force of the film... The movie tells an intriguing story of dependence, responsability, betrayel and love between two sisters, made concrete not by the sickness itself, but indirectly by its consequences, psychologically and concrete: This is not ultimately a story of light allergy, but a dramatic story taking place in the context of light allergy, which uses the disease as a metaphor to reveal deep truths about us human beings. |
