Henrietta Fischer, Agnes Fischer in Person (Die Frau vor mir). In her first feature film, Henrietta Fischer imagines the life of the woman who came "before" her, her mother. Her observations and speculations are heard on the voice track, accompanied by images of an actress, Dorottya Udvaros, and Fischer's own daughter, Agnes. The woman's identity is ambiguous, varying as the voice-over slips in and out of synch with her actions; at times she seems to be Fischer in the present, at others, to be her mother in the past. The strongest sense is of the process by which one's identity is both created by oneself and inherited from others; the "woman before me" remains always thus, recognized in daily gestures and patterns depicted with an Akerman-like minimalism. With her mother's death, Fischer's narrated recollections cease, and for the first time, the on-screen woman speaks directly, hauntingly referring to her daughter as "the child," continuing the cycle of identification and separation. -Kathy Geritz