Karlovy Vary 2010: Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol

Producer and editor of mostly documentary films for the better part of the last decade, one could say Jeff Malmberg was primed up for his directing debut. A sensation at SXSW Film Fest, Malmberg’s Marwencol visits Mark Hogancamp, a young American, who was attacked and brutally beaten about a decade ago. After recovering from a coma, Mark started building a miniature city as a form of therapy. This city, named Marwencol, is inhabited by small figures Mark creates out of dolls. He invented stories (most of them violent, taking place in WWII), and dramatizes them in his own city.

Malmberg seems to be so fascinated by the endless imagination of Hogancamp, that every other aspect of his life is pushed aside. Endless stories are shown on the screen through the figures in Marwencol, and there is almost no account of Hogancamp’s physical or mental health in reality, which means the scale is tipped towards the make believe rather than the reality, which is a shame when you have a potentially moving story of a man using his imagination to recuperate from a terrible attack.