3 Scenes from a Marriage

What happens when film breaks out of its frame and unfolds as space around you? In Leopold Emmen’s installations, the surroundings, the location and your own gaze shape the story.

For the past 15 years, Nanouk Leopold (director of Wolfsbergen and It’s All So Quiet) and Daan Emmen have been creating tranquil, dreamlike compositions that offer cinematic experiences unbound by time. Their collaboration began with Close-up (IFFR 2009), a six-hour film projected onto Rotterdam’s Hofpoort building. Since then, architecture has taken centre stage in their practice: for Leopold, because of the way location underpins narrative; for Emmen, through optical illusions and spatial interventions.

During IFFR 2026, they present a new installation in three scenes, constructed from reused materials. This reuse resonates with theatre tradition, in which characters are continually reinterpreted. Here, figures move through spaces that shift between interior and film set; walls, ceilings and furniture transform into thresholds, passageways and voids.

There is no linear narrative; as a visitor, you navigate the scenes yourself. Leopold Emmen offers no answers, but rather a meditative invitation to experience what cinema might become when time and space unravel.

– Eva Langerak

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