For a documentary series on the ten commandments, produced by DOXY Films and EOdocs, Marc Schmidt delved into the first commandment: ‘I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me’. His film How To Disappear Completely has become a very personal quest into excess and insatiability. Together with four peers, Marc explores the feeling of emptiness and how we try to escape it. This is not Marc and DOXY's first collaboration: they previously made the documentaries In the Arms of Morpheus (2020) and Guards (2018) together.

Your father hovers over the film like a dark cloud.

My dark cloud, I do like that characterisation. It's also what I was trying to show in the film. My father was the starting point. I wanted to make my uneasy relationship with him palpable. He was an artist and a very difficult man. I think you can see that from the way he occasionally looks at me or into the camera without saying anything. As a filmmaker, I wanted to do something with that while he was still alive. For a long time, I had a folder on my desktop with all the ideas that could be about that. That folder was called The Black. Very occasionally I would look at it, put something in and that was it.

Why did it work out this time?

A request came from the Evangelical Broadcaster (EO) if I wanted to collaborate on a series of documentaries about the ten commandments. I was allowed to make a film proposal for one of the commandments. Then I thought this might be a good opportunity to open that folder. It also contained the footage I had shot just before my father died in 2015. I had started filming him without having any idea what I wanted to do with it. It was clear by then that he had terminal liver cancer. Then I started looking back at the footage. I also had all the scans of his etchings. It's very beautiful work. I had many problems with my father, but that work of his stands, as far as I am concerned.

The first commandment is a difficult one: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.

Probably the most abstract commandment. I was raised non-believing myself, but I think it is a beautiful commandment, because it is about worshipping something greater than yourself. It gradually coincided with the image I have of my father. As a result, it became a very free interpretation, very intuitive. I only had these recordings of him in his workshop. We don't speak to each other in it, as an image in itself it doesn't say anything. The unsuspecting viewer just thinks: what a charming artist. Whereas my story is something else. So I had to get the heaviness into it, as well as my own struggles. Then I realised I needed a mirror and the idea of portraying other people with similar struggles came up.

What kind of struggle are you referring to exactly?

People who have looked for a solution to dampen a void within themselves. There are endless strategies for that. Some find it in drink, others in drugs, yet others go gambling or have kleptomaniac tendencies. During the research phase, it was fascinating to find out that all these strategies boil down to the same thing. It is all a matter of wanting to disappear, not wanting to face your own existence. Running away from being here in this world. Nobody asked to be here, you are just here. You have to deal with it, but what then? I often don't know either. I think a lot of people struggle with that. That's what the film was supposed to be about.

How did you decide which forms of disappearance you wanted to use?

I soon realised that I didn't want to choose substance addiction. So drink, drugs, weed: let's not go for that. Let's look more at people who have behavioural problems. To get closest to ordinary life, I ended up with eating problems and sex addiction. These are things that are part of ordinary life. After all, without food, you die. And having sex is also something of everyday life. What if those things get out of hand, or become very extreme? I actually found that much more interesting than substance addiction.

How do you link that to the first commandment? Is the God figure then the addiction?

You can see it that way. In fact, in the 12 steps of AA, one of the steps is that you acknowledge a force greater than yourself. Originally, AA is a religious organisation, so in the past that force was also literally God. That has since been generalised to a force greater than yourself. To quit addiction, it is essential to recognise that you are not the centre. Therein lies the link to the first commandment. You can also see drugs or sex as a substitute for God. It can also be a way of not having to feel the overwhelm of life. I think everyone in the film struggles with that, including my father. He and I never got to talk about that, but that's my strong suspicion. And I think people who, for whatever reason, didn't grow up completely safe, or detached, also know that struggle. Studies have been done on children born during the hunger winter, and a higher than average percentage developed mental and physical symptoms later in life.

You're dropping quite a bombshell when you say about your father: “Your memories are my nightmares.”

You can't really make a film about your father without it also being about yourself, though I initially tried. That's why I decided at a certain point to appear in front of the camera myself. In the film, that moment comes fairly late. The camera suddenly turns to me, and I have to expose myself. We deliberately chose to place that moment toward the end for dramatic reasons. If you do it earlier, it creates an expectation that I will share much more concrete details. Now, my story becomes part of the other stories. Because, in a way, all confessions are interchangeable. Everyone tells something, but no one tells everything. Together, they tell a complete story. That was the idea behind it. I also had to be a part of that puzzle, but I didn't have to reveal everything. That keeps it interesting.

Because of that, the dark cloud lingers.

Indeed, my whole childhood was in a way a dark cloud. Nothing was ever said. My father was a dominant man who never shared [his demons], at least nothing sincere. There were plenty of stories, but it was unclear what was true. My parents eventually divorced. A long, complicated process; it wasn’t a good marriage. I went with my mother. The fact that I can function in this world is thanks to her.

How did you choose the people portrayed? 

We searched very deliberately: someone with eating disorders, someone with a sex addiction. You can find them online. Researchers Monique Lesterhuis and Yke van Dok helped me with that because I’m not very good at it myself. It’s really a skill. I wanted a solo sailor because such people literally disappear off the map. I initially thought of a man, as most solo sailors are. Then we came across Christa, and there was an instant click. Very easy. And it actually went the same way with the others. The moment we sat across from each other, it felt right.

The images of the sailor during her ocean voyage are intense. 

She filmed them herself and just handed them to me. Here, a hard drive full. Very special, because there are some very intimate confessions, some of which made it into the film. She is an amazing woman. She practically gave me her diary. That total trust was there with everyone. Even the woman with a sex addiction gave me her diary. Here, see what you can do with it. I don’t know if I could do that myself. But for the right balance, I had to reveal something about myself too.

What I like is that you created a unique visual language for each of the four confessions.

I didn’t want to show four people talking in a room. At first, I did some interviews in their homes. Very little of that made it into the film. Then I tried to find locations that matched their stories. With the solo sailor, you sail along on her ship. With the red-haired girl, I experimented by filming in a white studio, where she could literally disappear. A gamble, because I didn’t know how she would react. She responded beautifully. So yes, we didn’t use the same setting for everyone. It’s about excesses, so I wanted extremes in visual language. Filming in both a completely white and black studio.

The way you portray the woman with the sex addiction is quite spectacular. 

It’s anonymization through deepfake technology. Literally a moving mask to hide behind. She didn’t want to come forward with her sex addiction due to her job, which I understand. So we came up with this solution. We also distorted her voice using AI.

I wanted to be transparent about that in the film. Hence the scene where she and I are watching what’s possible. The technology is now so advanced that it became almost too perfect. The first test was too good; you forget she’s wearing a mask. Technically, it could be better, but we didn’t want that. By not having her voice completely in sync, we found the solution. Now it’s also a bit creepy, which I think works well.

The eating disorder of the bulimia patient is uncomfortable to watch. Where did you draw the line to avoid being voyeuristic? 

That was always in consultation. We even included that consultation in an early version of the film to show that she fully agreed. And her eating is all simulated: you never see her put anything in her mouth. We also didn’t film her from the front, but consistently from behind. So we suggest a lot, but nothing really happens. Still, I feel a bit queasy when I watch it.

Is she the most troubled? She also transforms herself with plastic surgery. 

Yes, although she says in the interview that during her pregnancy, she hardly suffered from her disorder. Afterward, it came back full force. But she’s doing better now. You often see that with people with such issues. If they participate in a film, they’re usually already on the road to recovery. At their lowest point, they don’t have space for that. Once they’re thinking about recovery, they can talk about it. The process of making a film becomes part of the recovery. I noticed that with previous documentaries as well.

Is it a coincidence that they are all women? 

In the original plan, we wanted a mix of men and women, but it turned out differently. We unintentionally ended up with a solo female sailor, and she was so interesting that I thought: what does it matter, a woman. Most people with eating disorders are women, although we also spoke to men. But we were intrigued specifically by Romy. And strangely enough, we also ended up with a woman for the sex addiction. I had the bias that this was mostly a male issue, so I liked debunking that. And suddenly, we had four people, and they were all women! Is that a problem or not? But they were all great stories, and that’s what mattered.

Along the way, another factor came into play. There’s now a clear distinction between the people I portray on one side and my father and me on the other. Very clear, because my father and I are men, and they are women. It also makes it clear that we weren’t literally looking for copies of me and my father. It’s purely about the principle, the struggle. It removes the tendency to look at it one-to-one. But I’m not saying that these problems belong to women. That’s not the point at all.

Finally, the film introduces the performance of John Cage’s organ concert ‘As Slow As Possible’. Why did you include that? 

To bring the theme to a more universal, conceptual level. For me, the German interpretation of that piece is about the question of how much control we have over our existence. I find it an incredibly funny, daring, and moving artwork. The modest size of the little organ contrasts sharply with the insane length of the performance: 639 years! It’s like cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build. Only the existence of this composition is even more fleeting. The future even more uncertain. For me, it represents the fleeting nature of everything, and it beautifully confronts me with my own existence.