Revolver Live! #64: Selma Doborac, DE FACTO – Realising the inconceivable
at fsk cinema Berlin on 30 November 2025 at 8 p.m.
In her first two feature-length films, artist and filmmaker Selma Doborac grapples with crimes against humanity, testing the limits of how cinema can address such atrocities. In THOSE SHOCKING SHAKING DAYS, she contemplated the possibility of documenting the horrors of war through rhetorical questions alone. In DE FACTO, however, she takes a fundamentally different approach: arriving at cinematic answers through the rigorous distillation of extensive research.
The film’s clarity reveals the immense emotional and intellectual labor demanded of both director and cast to visualize the unfathomable. It is a work of deep consideration, carefully balancing abstraction with fact, and theatricality with restraint. This calibration serves a singular purpose: to move closer to an authentic reckoning with crimes that are not inhuman, but devastatingly human.
Following the screening, we will discuss the creative process behind the film and how De Facto arrived at its distinct form.
(Franz Müller)
Tickets for Revolver Live! #64 & screening of DE FACTO at fsk cinema Berlin Kreuzberg:
https://fsk-kino.peripherfilm.de/events/event/revolver-live-de-facto/
“From the very first moment, DE FACTO develops a pull effect through the accuracy and complexity of its written text, increasingly opening out into a movement of thought. Paralysing moments in which genocidal crimes are described are repeatedly interrupted by historical and philosophical references, whereby the language spoken triggers its own reflection.”
(Nothing More Monstrous than Man: The Caligari Prize-Winning Film DE FACTO, Essay by Silvia Bahl, Translation Peter Waugh, published in Filmdienst, March 2023)
“This film can be applied like a template to genocides, war crimes or speeches by dictators. It contains a consistent truth. Recognising that truth is the work of the film. It is up to us to do something about it. In this day and age, it has become almost an anachronism that one can only experience the temporality evoked by a film if we are exposed to it for the entire duration (either of one shot or of the whole film). Listening is an anachronism. At the same time, however, it is precisely this exposure that reminds us of the peculiar power of the medium. One listens and physically experiences what it means to be aware of the things that human beings are capable of.”
(DE FACTO – Actualising an Evocation, Essay by Patrick Holzapfel, Translation Peter Waugh, published in Fidback, Revue de cinéma, Print Issue #0, September 2024)
“In DE FACTO it is Doborac who has amalgamated, over many years of research, what might otherwise have been treated as isolated cases, in a vacuum and categorised under the usual headings. This is a necessary step for cinema, because that which is said and which it is permissible to say changes with time. Then there are also the new old crimes. Cinema needs approaches that enable it to adapt, rather than certainties. Drawing comparisons between different crimes, an approach often used in political discourse, tends to lead in the wrong direction. Often it does not produce any insight at all, but rather serves to stigmatise – one need only think of the numerous Holocaust comparisons. It involves outworn arguments about manslaughter, which detach the actual crimes from their time, indicating the seriousness to a certain degree, but not presenting what actually happens or even how it could be prevented. Here, Doborac strives for the opposite: she does not draw any comparisons, but amalgamates them all as one. Could we speak of a utopian hope here? If we could understand what all these perpetrators have in common, could we prevent their crimes in the future?”
(DE FACTO – Actualising an Evocation, Essay by Patrick Holzapfel, Translation Peter Waugh, published in Fidback, Revue de cinéma, Print Issue #0, September 2024)
Film information DE FACTO (AUT/GER 2023, 130 minutes) by Selma Doborac:
https://sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/2968/
https://www.filmgarten.at/de-facto
https://jugendohnefilm.com/augenhoehen-ein-gespraech-mit-selma-doborac-zu-de-facto/
Credits:AT/DE 2023, 130 Min., deutsche OmeU
Drehbuch, Regie, Schnitt, Produktion: Selma Doborac
Kamera: Klemens Hufnagl
Ton: Claus Benischke-Lang
Tonmischung: Jochen Jezussek
Musik: Didi Kern & Philipp Quehenberger
Casting: Ulrike Müller
Objekte: Heimo Zobernig & Franz West
Mit: Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya
Trailer:nach oben
Deutsch