Carlotta, a charming fifty-year-old woman, has never been able to remember a single face for her entire lifetime. She does not even recognize her own face – every morning, she encounters an unknown woman when she looks in the mirror. Since birth, Carlotta has suffered from face blindness, a deficit in her brain. She looks at a face and forgets it immediately. So, since birth, Carlotta has been surrounded by strangers and only has a fragmentary image of herself. The action of the film starts out in a small region of the brain that is specialized to process faces.

Based on his knowledge of the activity pattern of these nerve cells, neuroscientist and film-maker Valentin Riedl sets out to discover Carlotta’s world. The film seeks to translate Carlotta’s perspective on the world in a living a​nd creative way and thus mixes her powerful self-portraits, surreal entries from her intimate dream-book and poetic impressions taken from the scientific sphere of facial perception. 

Development funded by the Wim-Wenders-Grant of Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. Production funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, BKM and FFF Bavaria