My Name Was Sabina Speilrein(Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein)

France, Germany, Sweden · 2002
1h 30m
Director Elisabeth Marton
Starring Eva Österberg, Lasse Almebäck, Mercedez Csampai, Palle Granditsky
Genre

The history of psychoanalysis is littered with the discarded psyches of the women whose diagnoses were key to the fame of the great masters. One such woman was Sabina Spielrein. Unlike the rest, she didn't vanish forever from history. Elisabeth Márton's film relates, restages and remembers the tragic story of Spielrein's life as gleaned from a box of her papers discovered in 1977 in the cellar of Geneva's former Institute of Psychology.

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What are critics saying?

Variety by

Engaging doc should stir psychologists and feminists.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

As complex as its subject's life and - like her - both flawed and fascinating.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

A fascinating historical tale is rendered with less than compelling results in this pseudo-documentary.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Told mostly through haunting, often chilling visual fragments, this handsomely mounted and unusually gripping account amounts to an important exercise in biography: It faithfully restores Spielrein to her rightful place as a crucial contributor to the fields of child psychology and psychoanalysis.

The New York Times by Lawrence Van Gelder

However fascinating the source material, there's something less than cinematic about 90 minutes of watching people read letters in front of windows.

Village Voice by Leslie Camhi

This evocative film is a poignant testament to the twin forces of love (however blighted) and the unconscious.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Hats off to Elisabeth Marton, who has taken a bunch of dry facts and fashioned them into the gorgeous My Name Was Sabina Spielrein.