Ticket for Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Sing

Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Sing

Sabine Timoteo, Switzerland 2017

In her directorial debut, Sabine Timoteo tears down all walls and limitations known to classic narrative cinema. Like in Herk Harvey’s underground classic »Carnival of Souls«, her heroine Claire sleepwalks through her own life or what she perceives it to be. She cannot connect to anybody, familiar people around her vanish, they are redacted, revised. It’s like others would not see her anymore or maybe she does not see them? Her job as a kindergarten teacher, her kids, her husband – everything around her gets lost in ambivalence. The impulse in her to find another side keeps growing. »How do you explain something you don’t understand yourself?«, she asks herself. Then she sets out to find Clara. She travels alone, goes into the night, meets people, communicates, she observes, she feels. »Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Sing«, one of them says to her. In the end, she finds Clara – and she sings. This story about death and rebirth was developed by Sabine Timoteo and Doro Müggler. A wild piece of underground cinema, created in the overwhelming urge to simply let things happen. What was a way towards death in »Carnival of Souls«, here becomes a path from lethargy back to life.