section Documentary Film Competition

I Like It Here

  • Ralph Arlyck
  • US
  • 2022
  • 88 min

With a lightness that does not look sadly at the past and not anxiously at the future, but curiously observes the changing perspectives of a life, the 82-year-old cult documentarian Ralph Arlyck reflects on age(ing). Never without a camera, he thinks about his life, films his neighbors, his wife, his doctors - gets on their nerves and asks unpleasant questions, even to himself.

How life just happens. Where it leads, without warning, without consideration of the consequences, without intention. As a filmmaker, Ralph Arlyck would appear to have captured his whole life on film. Not to mention that of his children and that of his parents; yet what remains of it all in the end? In this documentary film he reflects on age and the approaching the end of his life. What did he once think about "the elderly", what do "the elderly" today think of themselves? Arlyck digs up old film footage, finds stories from his past, from his parents' past and reflects on the relationship between generations. He wants to talk in the here and now. Some respond readily, some are surprised, others prove evasive. Even harder than looking at the past, it seems, is looking at what is inevitably to come; perhaps sooner rather than later. And yet despite the serious issues, despite the heightened gravity of the topic of death due to the corona pandemic, Arlyck's very personal documentation retains a certain lightness, containing as it does a healthy portion of pragmatism and acceptance. A profound and self-deprecating look at the reality and surprises of growing old, in the course of which the viewers hardly get to see Arlyck for themselves, instead experiencing him for the most part through the reactions of those who stand in front of his camera.
Text: Charlotte Kühn
English: Peter Rickerby


On 14.6. at 19:00 at Kino Krokodil, director Ralph Arlyck will be present via video for a film talk after the film.


watch trailer

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Credits

original title I Like It Here

international title I Like It Here

german title I Like It Here

JFBB section Documentary Film Competition

  • director Ralph Arlyck

country/countries US

year 2022

duration 88 min


Portrait of Ralph Arlyck

Ralph Arlyck

BIO Ralph Arlyck has produced more than a dozen prize-winning, films, which have appeared on PBS, BBC, Arte, screened at the White House, and featured at festivals worldwide, including Sundance, New York, London, Rotterdam. His feature, FOLLOWING SEAN, played theatrically across the United States and was nominated for two Emmy awards. Arlyck has also produced CURRENT EVENTS, an examination of the ways people respond to horrific news events, and AN ACQUIRED TASTE, a wry look at American culture's obsession with success — considered a classic of independent cinema and called by Vincent Canby in the New York Times, “...a delight...a funny, loving movie”. Throughout his career, Arlyck has also played a key advocacy role for American independent producers, testifying twice in Congress and before the Carnegie Commission on the role of independents in public television. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship.