Who We Will Have Been 2021

Filmmaker Erec Brehmer's world collapses when his longtime partner Angelina Zeidler dies in a car accident. Using personal videos, photos, voice messages, diary entries and music they shared, he creates ways of meeting and loving her again despite her absence. "We don't talk about the dead, even though that's the only thing we can still do" once someone is gone. And so, Who We Will Have Been is less a documentary and more a mode of communication with the deceased, where slow motion, reverse and soundbites taken in a totally different context suddenly give profound meaning and subtext. When Angi asks in a saved video "Am I still in time?" it resonates with deep, universal, spooky-action-at-a-distance significance. Do we still exist in time without a body and out of mind? Brehmer's powerfully emotional and absorbing meditation on living with loss recognizes that grief changes, but never really ends, like love.

Filmmaker Erec Brehmer's world collapses when his longtime partner Angelina Zeidler dies in a car accident. Using personal videos, photos, voice messages, diary entries and music they shared, he creates ways of meeting and loving her again despite her absence. "We don't talk about the dead, even though that's the only thing we can still do" once someone is gone. And so, Who We Will Have Been is less a documentary and more a mode of communication with the deceased, where slow motion, reverse and soundbites taken in a totally different context suddenly give profound meaning and subtext. When Angi asks in a saved video "Am I still in time?" it resonates with deep, universal, spooky-action-at-a-distance significance. Do we still exist in time without a body and out of mind? Brehmer's powerfully emotional and absorbing meditation on living with loss recognizes that grief changes, but never really ends, like love.