I PLANT MY HAND IN THE GARDEN at 83. Bien­nale in Venedig

We are delight­ed that I PLANT MY HAND IN THE GARDEN (direction/​screenplay: Hoda Taheri & Boris Hadži­ja, pro­duc­tion: Max­i­m­il­ian Feld­kamp) will have its world pre­miere at the 83rd Venice Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val (La Bien­nale di Venezia). Boris Hadži­ja’s DFFB grad­u­a­tion film has been invit­ed to the main com­pe­ti­tion of Gior­nate degli Autori (Venice Days), one of the fes­ti­val’s most pres­ti­gious sec­tions.

The film tells the sto­ry of Hoda, an Iran­ian refugee liv­ing in Berlin, and Boris, a queer man from Ser­bia. Togeth­er they decide to mar­ry and raise a child. As fam­i­ly expec­ta­tions, bureau­crat­ic hur­dles and per­son­al expe­ri­ences increas­ing­ly shape their plans for the future, they begin to ques­tion what fam­i­ly actu­al­ly means and whether new ways of liv­ing togeth­er beyond soci­etal norms are pos­si­ble.

Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadži­ja met at the DFFB. Dur­ing their stud­ies, they made a num­ber of short films togeth­er, which screened at the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val and the Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Rot­ter­dam, among oth­ers. I PLANT MY HAND IN THE GARDEN is their fea­ture debut.

Draw­ing on auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal expe­ri­ences, I PLANT MY HAND IN THE GARDEN moves along the bor­der between fic­tion and real­i­ty. The film explores ques­tions of belong­ing, fam­i­ly and iden­ti­ty, and turns its atten­tion to peo­ple who have to rede­fine their place with­in exist­ing soci­etal struc­tures.

We warm­ly con­grat­u­late the entire team on this extra­or­di­nary invi­ta­tion and wish the film a suc­cess­ful world pre­miere in Venice.