A Fleeting Passage to the Orient

Images of Egypt: prolonged tracking shots through the streets of Cairo, cafes, bazars, hotels and gardens, footage of the desert and the sea. Ruth Beckermann is on the trail of Empress Elisabeth of Austria ("Sissi"), who travelled the world restlessly and was in Egypt incognito one hundred years earlier. Since Elisabeth refused to be photographed after the age of 31, she inspires projections and fantasies. In this essay film based on extracts from letters written by the empress, her consort and her reader, as well as the filmmaker’s off-screen commentary, the 19th and 20th centuries are juxtaposed, as are subjective confrontation with the other - of the empress as well as of the country - and the attempt to reflect an orientalist gaze. "Sometimes all layers of time are visible in the space of a few kilometers."