FORBACH FOREVER

FORBACH FOREVER

Director: Marie Dumora
Documentary | F | 2015
122 min | Stereo

49th Hof International Film Festival
2015

In the suburbs of Forbach/France, there is a street block called the Holweig (the ‘Hole’). It’s the Gypsy quarter, sort of like a tiny French Harlem. In every house, there is a musician. Some of them are scrap merchants during the day and play American jazz standards of the 40s at night. The filmmaker follows two guitarists, Samson Schmitt, the avant-gardist of modern Gypsy music, and Mike Reinhardt, a prize winner at the Montreux festival. After a show at the Birdland in New York or a jazz club in Copenhagen, they always return home to their families and friends and play music until dawn in their backyards, stuck between caravans and barbecues. Among them, Rovelo Merstein, a neighbor and young pianist, who dreams of living the lives of his great idols. The movie follows their journeys across the world, between concerts, tours, recording studios and jam sessions in family circles.