Tussilago
2010 · 15m · Sweden
Directed by jonas odell
Genres: animation, biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A young woman recounts, in voiceover, how her romance with West Berlin terrorist Norbert Körcher in the 1970s became a descent she only came to understand in retrospect.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise wants to be transgressive—a love story with a terrorist—but Odell plays it too safe, letting the voiceover do the moral heavy lifting instead of letting the contradiction actually *breathe*. Fascinating material neutered by restraint.
Odell's collage of archival footage, animation, and intimate testimony creates a formal conversation with documentary tradition while sitting in genuine dialogue with the '70s archive itself—the editing is the argument, not the narration.
The decision to let animation interrupt and reframe the archival material is the whole film: it's not nostalgia or critique, it's a voice physically redrawing her own memory, and that single formal choice transforms what could've been a podcast into something cinematically necessary.
Reviews
La richesse du sujet choisi par Odell, mais également son admirable travail d'animation au service de son sujet, font de « Tussilago » une petite pépite à mettre entre les mains de tous ceux qui croient encore que l'animation est un cinéma pour « enfant ». Avec « Tussilago », Odell confirme sont talent pour l'animation documentaire, et la qualité de ses choix esthétiques et narratifs sont toujours au service des sujets qu'il traite.