No hay camino (2021)

Directed by: Heddy Honigmann | 92 minutes | documentary | With: Heddy Honigmann, Henk van de Staak, Stefan van de Staak

It is confronting to see when someone deteriorates and portrays this without gene. How fragile the body really is, even if the mind is still strong. Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann is at this point, she has been told that she will not live long. Honigmann is now very difficult to walk and needs a lot of care to get through the day well. Nevertheless, she wants to go to her native Peru one more time. And then Honigmann does what she has been doing all her working life, making films about or rather with people, because she would rather seek out the conversation than ask someone the question as an interviewer. ‘No Hay Camino’ turns things around somewhat and has thus become a moving self-portrait.

During her journey in ‘No Hay Camino’, Honigmann shows how even family can see a shared past very differently. Before she goes to Peru, Honigmann talks to a sister for the umpteenth time about her father who survived the Holocaust. Heddy had a very complicated relationship with her father and in her youth felt gagged by his war trauma. Her sister confirms this, but didn’t have a bad relationship and doesn’t really want to talk about Heddy’s struggles with their father anymore. She thinks Heddy isn’t right, because she doesn’t give him enough credit that way. After all, he founded the family in Peru.

During the conversation with her sister, you can see Heddy’s pain about not being able to fully agree. Nevertheless, they will just continue to see each other and continue bickering. This conversation will never really end. This kind of despair characterizes Honigmann’s open mind in her work, which not only enriches with outpourings but also does not shy away from our lack and impotence in life. This is what makes her documentaries so human and endearing.

Every now and then ‘No Hay Camino’ comes close to melodrama. Honigmann not only makes the trip to Peru to visit old acquaintances and to better understand its history, but also to say goodbye. Her own son is also behind the camera. Yet Honigmann manages to balance the tear and laughter in such a way that the film continues to celebrate life against every current. Fragments from old work in this film confirm this immense resilience of people, as in ‘Metaal en melancholy’ (1994). In it, Honigmann talks to a taxi driver who explains with a broad smile why his completely written off car is still in service. He alone knows how this wreckage works, so if someone tries to steal it, the thief won’t get past the next corner of the street. Honigmann’s work is full of this kind of hopeful ingenuity and humanity.

‘No Hay Camino’ means something like “there is no way”. Then Honigmann talks about her life and secretly everyone’s. According to her, you only take steps forward in a thick fog and later we stick a smooth path ourselves. Honigmann takes those small steps with a big heart and inventiveness, as with many people she came into contact with in her life. This film, and almost her entire oeuvre, is therefore anything but a dead end, but one that is always open.