Director: Lynne Sachs | 82 minutes | documentary
https://cinemagazine.nl/every-contact-leaves-a-trace-2025-recensie/
A film about traces, guilt and memory — and about the impossibility of approaching the past arbitrarily.
In “Every Contact Leaves a Trace,” experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs starts from a seemingly simple idea: she’s spent her life collecting business cards from people she’s encountered along the way—colleagues, festival directors, strangers who popped into her life briefly. Most have long since vanished. What remains is a box full of names, numbers, and faded impressions. Sachs decides to reconnect with some of them, camera in hand, while her children ask her questions about who these people were—and why them in particular.
The premise is intriguing: a film about the traces left by encounters. Yet, Sachs doesn’t allow for chance. She chooses the people she remembers well, those with whom the connection was once tangible. This keeps the adventure within safe boundaries; the possibility that the unknown might truly surprise her remains unexploited.
Yet, despite her limited abilities, Sachs manages to keep the film alive until the very end. Ultimately, ‘Every Contact Leaves a Trace’ isn’t just about the people behind the tickets; it gradually unfolds into a film about the past, atonement, and guilt. She visits Angela, a former German festival director, who, using Heinrich Heine’s poem “Die arme Weber” (The Poor Weber), speaks about the legacy of guilt that weighs on Germany. Sachs accompanies her narrative with daring poetic imagery—close-ups on 8mm and digital—supported by Stephen Vitiello’s pulsating score. What could have been a simple interview elevates into an essayistic pamphlet on memory and responsibility.
At times, however, Sachs goes too far. In her search for form, she veers toward abstraction: audio fragments and fragmented sentences tumble over each other like a maelstrom of thoughts. In these moments, the film threatens to descend into artistic introspection—art for art’s sake—and the lighthearted curiosity that usually characterizes her work vanishes. Fortunately, she always regains her balance.
One of the most intriguing encounters is with avant-garde filmmaker Lawrence Brose, whose work on Oscar Wilde is visually captivating, but whose personal history remains fraught: he was once convicted of possessing child pornography, a charge he claims had nothing to do with his artistic practice. The film touches on moral ambiguity here without resorting to sensationalism—and it is precisely there that Sachs reveals her strength: behind every card lies a person who, as soon as the camera focuses on him and thus magnifies him, proves to be extraordinary.
What remains is a film that tells as much about Sachs herself as it does about the people she visits. Her gaze, her voice, her editing—that’s what makes “Every Contact Leaves a Trace” tick. She captures beauty in the mundane, elevates the casual to poetry, and shows that even the most fleeting encounter leaves a lasting legacy.
Martijn Smits
Rating: 4
Special screening: IDFA 2025