Searching Eva

Eva – 25, drifter, Berliner, poet, pet-owner, sex worker, virgo, recovering addict, housewife, feminist, model – declared privacy an outdated concept at the age of 14.  This is the tale of a young woman growing up in the age of the internet, turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, challenging you on what a woman “should be“. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old. A portrait of modern existence.

Eva Collé is a performer, model, web personality, sex worker and the protagonist of Searching Eva – the visual diary of Pia Hellenthal. A living art project, of sorts, Eva reflects on who she really is: writing and talking about embarrassing/intimate themes, showing her body in different poses and different naturalisms. The body is an object of particular interest to her, as are social divisions and labelling. Eva would like to get rid of these conventions once and for all, redefining them, perhaps, but she is unconsciously entangled and imprisoned. Her narration about Berlin and the places she attends presents an unconventional energy that seems to tell the truth about her. The conversations we are witnessing with her mother, her grandmother, her friends, her future roommates show an interesting approach to contemporary identity, where the overlap between the virtual and the real uncovers everything about you – but at the same time forces you into dangerous existential fictions.

Maria Cera

About the Director

Pia Hellenthal is a Cologne based writer & director working in fiction and documentary. 2013 Hellenthal graduated from Academy of Media Arts Cologne with a Diploma in Media and Fine Art. Her short films screened at various international film festivals like Karlovy Vary, New York and Oberhausen and received prizes like the Prix H. R. Giger „Narcisse“ for best short. Next to her own films, Hellenthal has been working for publications like VICE, where her work got nominated for the Lovie Awards and licensed to international TV Stations.  For her debut film Searching Eva she received the 2016 Gerd Ruge Scholarship from Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the Goethe Institut Film Residency in Beirut and took part in the dok.incubator Workshop 2018.