The Parallel Street

Ferdinand Khittl’s poetic, mysterious and puzzle-like feature is a meta-documentary that binds together the themes of LIFF 2021’s Kafkaesque Cinema selection: five films that resonate with ideas in the writings of novelist Franz Kafka, screened in partnership with Dr Angelos Koutsourakis on his Arts and Humanities Research Council Project, The Kafkaesque in World Cinema. Five men sit in a dimly lit room, where they must solve a series of obscure documents. Intercut with unique travelogue style footage, The Parallel Street is an early highlight of the New German Cinema and a precursor to Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil.

The Parallel Street, a unique hybrid form of fictionalized documentary, was received very favourably abroad (particularly in France), much more so indeed than in Germany, where audiences were unprepared for such a challenging and intellectually stimulating film. The often hostile reactions to it in the German press say much more about the state of German film culture and the dearth of quality film criticism than about the film itself. Khittl was one of the signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto and this, his only feature, is a compelling and extraordinary odyssey, combining documentary sequences filmed across the globe with a bizarre, Kafkaesque trial.