From experimental video art to narrative arthouse cinema, my upcoming features Sick Bacchus and The First Hour after Violent Death explore the boundaries of storytelling, emotion, and visual poetry.
As a filmmaker, my journey began in the intimate and exploratory realm of video art and experimental cinema. These early works allowed me to play with form, texture, and the subtle interplay of light and emotion, creating visual poetry that invited reflection rather than conventional storytelling.
Each frame was an experiment, a question posed to the viewer, and a way for me to explore the boundaries of cinematic expression.
Over time, I felt a compelling pull toward narrative storytelling. I wanted to merge the sensibilities of my experimental practice with the immersive possibilities of feature-length films. This evolution was not a departure from my roots but an expansion—an opportunity to bring the visual rigor and emotional depth of video art into the world of narrative cinema.
My upcoming feature films, including Sick Bacchus and The First Hour after Violent Death, continue this trajectory. They are grounded in character, story, and emotion, yet they retain the lyricism, symbolism, and visual inventiveness that defined my early work.
Each project is a meditation on human experience, inviting audiences to not only follow a story but to feel it, sense it, and interpret it in their own way.
What excites me most is seeing these films reach the theatrical space, where the shared experience of cinema transforms viewing into a communal, almost ritualistic event. From experimental shorts on gallery walls to feature films on the big screen, this journey reflects my ongoing fascination with storytelling as both an art form and a lived experience.
I invite you to follow this journey, explore the films, and experience how experimental imagination meets narrative depth in contemporary arthouse cinema.
— Monika K. Adler, London, 2026.
