Siri Hustvedt – Dance Around the Self

From her New York home, which Norwegian-American Siri Hustvedt (b. 1955) shared with her husband, Paul Auster (1947-2024), she reflects on her life journey and literary career in this remarkably accomplished biographical documentary, which centers on the choice to devote one’s life to art and literature.

The young, curious, and determined Siri Hustvedt leaves her hometown in Minnesota, where silence and stillness stretch as far as the eye can see, and throws herself into the pulsating urban life of New York City. In her search for the protagonist of her first novel, she embarks on a path that gives rise to one of the most compelling voices in contemporary American literature.

Sabine Lidl, who previously directed the film What If (2018) about Paul Auster, has created a work that is both intimate and sensuous. The new film is an honest portrayal of choosing literature as a way of life. Siri Hustvedt made that decision at a young age, and when she met Paul Auster in New York, it became a defining choice for them both.

With the city’s rich and vibrant cultural life as a backdrop, viewers are invited deep into Hustvedt’s distinctive way of thinking and living. The film also offers insight into a creative literary life that is inseparably intertwined with the great themes of human existence: love and loss, togetherness and separation.

See more at Tímin.fo