Orly

Summary

End of winter. Two hours at Orly Airport in Paris. The departure hall is full of people. A young woman on the way home to her husband falls for a stranger. A mother and her nearly grown son are travelling to the funeral of her ex-husband, the boy’s father. A young couple on their first big trip abroad lose touch with one another. A woman finally dares to read her husband’s break-up letter in the soothing anonymity of the public space. All are waiting for their planes. Completely absorbed in their immediate concerns, they move through the impeccably structured and functionalized building, unaware of a looming threat outside that will result in the airport’s imminent evacuation.

Angela Schanelec on the origin of the idea for "Orly": "Reinhold (Vorschneider, the film’s cameraman) and I were in Paris for the release of "Marseille", waiting for the return flight to Berlin. We were sitting in the restaurant where we later shot the movie. It is very beautiful, in a big hall flooded with light. Everything looks spacious and transparent, and people have their own place in it. I began wondering what stories they might have. What made me decide to shoot the film there was that this room was made for the people in it. It doesn’t put them in question, and that makes them attractive, or at least bearable. I had the feeling there that everything is possible, nothing is false. Of course my idea certainly had to do with my longstanding interest in urban spaces that, despite their anonymity, tie people together."

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)