Korean Premiere | 2015 Berlin International Film Festival

Synopsis

 By chance Paul KROMBERGER discovers on the Internet a photograph of the US opera diva Caterina FABIANI who is the spitting image of Evelyn, his dead wife. His unease and growing sense of alarm are transferred to his daughter, Sophie. Filled with curiosity, she leaves Germany and journeys across the Atlantic to make contact with this stranger. At their first meeting, Caterina is dismissive and unprepared to impart any information about herself or her family. But, little by little, secrets which have been hidden for decades deep in the hearts of the older generation come to light.
 

Program Note

 Paul comes across on the internet a photograph of the US opera diva Caterina who is the spitting image of his dead wife Evelyn. Sophie, a jazz singer and Paul\'s daughter, goes to New York to discover who Caterina is. Investigating Evelyn\'s personal relations, she uncovers her parents\' secret little by little. Up to this point, The Misplaced World merely seems like a corny doppelgänger film as the film reviewers or critics watching this film argue. Their argument could be true somehow because it is based on the director Margarethe von Trotta and her family\'s experiences. However, this film has some allegories that can be interpreted in a different way. The title, \'misplaced world\' implies the current reversed power relations between the U.S. and the Europe through Sophie singing jazz in Germany and Caterina singing opera in America. Evelyn\'s death and the relation between Paul and his brother who are still competing for Evelyn\'s love signify the impossibility of the unified European identity. In addition, the love between Caterina\'s Italian manager and Sophie, a German jazz singer is the symbol of hybridity in culture crossing the Atlantic. In other words, the Europe as the mother of imperialism was dead, and that imperial period became the time of innocence as the European phantom. [Sunah KIM]