Faded away
SYNOPSIS
One night in November 1977, in the Alsatian coal-mining region, Isabelle Fisch disappeared on her way to the bus stop. She was nineteen years old, an activist, and wrote letters full of plans for the future. Six weeks later, her body was found in a forest: raped, beaten, and left to die in the cold.
The investigation stalled, leads contradicted one another, and soon rumors reversed the roles: the victim became the culprit. In 1982, the case was closed without further action. Isabelle disappeared a second time, erased this time by the justice system and by collective memory.
Forty-seven years later, voices are still speaking out to bring her back: the writer who tracks down lies, the journalist who never gave up on the case, the lawyer who exposes judicial flaws. They all carry a piece of her story.
This film reveals how some lives are erased twice: by death, then by indifference. Today, it is time to give her a voice again, to transform this silence into a story.
THE DIRECTOR
After studying history and art history in Strasbourg, Robin Hunzinger went on to study film at Jussieu under Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch, and Bernard Cuau.
He directs documentary films exploring history, war, the traces of memory, humanity’s confrontation with the unthinkable, and nature. He is a home filmmaker. He writes, reads, re-films, scans, reframes, re-edits, records, edits, and re-edits. Alone (often) in his studio in the Vosges. He is also a treasure hunter: he reuses and reinterprets existing images, reworking them to bring forth new narratives, often centered on the traces left in collective or individual memory.
His work serves as a reflection on transmission, forgetting, and traces. He delves into the layers of the past to bring forth fragmented narratives, reconstructing history as closely as possible to the sensory experience.
His films have been screened at numerous festivals in Europe, North America, and Asia: Cinéma du réel (Paris), DOCAVIV (Tel Aviv), DOK.fest Munich, Doxa (Vancouver), É Tudo Verdade (Sao Paulo), États généraux du film documentaire de Lussas, FIDBA (Buenos Aires), IFFR (Rotterdam), Joburb Film Festival (Johannesburg), and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. They have been screened in museums such as SFMOMA (San Francisco).
His approach to archival material has earned him international recognition, particularly with the Beeld en Geluid ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive at IDFA in 2021. He has received three SCAM Stars (2007, 2008, 2018), as well as the Grand Prize at the Traces de Vie Festival in 2008, the Ahmed Attia Award at MEDIMED in 2011, the FREEDOM International Prize at the Luxor African Film Festival, the 2019 Educational Film Prize at the International Educational Film Festival (Evreux), the Mastercard Grand Prix at Écrans Mixtes in 2022, and the Best Editing Award at RIDFF in 2022. In 2025, he began adapting his films into live performances (Ultraviolette at the Théâtre National Populaire in Villeurbanne).
Other works with Ana Films :
Motoco (2023)
Ultraviolette et le gang des cracheuses de sang (2021)
Le recours aux forêts (2019)
