Ascribed memories and felines in “Cat on my mind” at the 2026 goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film6 min read
The idea of creating a film based on a pile of forgotten photo negatives from 1968-78 might seem like a brilliant exercise in creativity, but one is forced to wonder what right we have to tell other people’s stories – especially without their consent. The art of storytelling takes on a poetic and cinematic tone in Cat on my mind, producing a film wherein we know neither whose mind the cat is on, nor whether the cat was really on it. What we can tell from this portrayal of second-hand interpretation, assumption and reading-between-the-lines concerns more the director’s artistic flair rather than an authentic narrative, and it should be interpreted as so.
This film is an attempt to know what is on someone else’s mind, but we are forced to question whether speculation is a right or an invasion of privacy. With opening scenes depicting a collection of rubbish bins outside a block of flats, introducing the forgotten images, it becomes clear that this film will be something outside of the ordinary. Indeed, the ability to piece together some kind of story from a seemingly random collection of images is quite extraordinary – writing a tale that includes a chicken, a piglet, a cat and an array of people and vehicles.
The film causes us to question what these photographs meant to those who took them. It brings into consideration the value of photography, and how this has changed over time due to a newfound access to modern phones with good quality cameras. Do images mean less to us now, in an era of fake and AI-generated content? Taking photos is about capturing a moment in time – a person, animal or scene that meant a lot to people. This film, however, left me with more questions than answers about who the unknown figure(s) could be behind the camera.
The method of storytelling used here, of vast levels of extrapolation, is of interest. With shaky handheld footage contrasting the black and white stills, a segment frozen in time, the transitions between sedentary and moving scenes are smooth, and are a credit to the skills of the film crew – even if the concept is jarring. Knowing nothing about the people in the images must make it difficult to revive the past, however. The film is more about imagination, in that case, than reconstruction. It is an effective exercise in speculation, certainly, but may leave viewers concerned or confused.
Despite the effective techniques, they fail to mask a lack of depth – something that surfaces in the fragmented nature of the film. Realistically, portraying a sense of depth would have been nearly impossible without knowing more about the characters – but in that case, perhaps it is not the director’s story to tell. The concept of agency – over images of yourself, over the faces within, comes into the limelight. Translated into a contemporary context, a film like this would see a director piece together a narrative based on your Instagram feed, jumping from a beach vacation picture to a beer garden on a Friday night. That does not, however, mean that this is your life. Linking images with fragile threads of uncertainty leaves the film in an ethical grey area.
The quality of images varies greatly, with many remaining blurred, overexposed or partially blocked. The inclusion of these perhaps underlines the imperfect nature of the film, which initially seems to centre on a man taking photos of his children, life, pets, family and village. Whether it’s a photo of Aunt Emma, an assigned character, doing some gardening or an image of racing trucks at a community gathering, there is certainly a sense of spirit captured in the images and the narrative curated to fit in between. At some point, it is implied that the camera is passed down to the man’s son, and although this may bring some sort of clarity to the audience, questions still abound.
The use of upbeat music gives the onlooker a very positive view of the life of the anonymous protagonist(s), as the actors, who are not professionals, but people found to look like the people in the images, carry out the minutia of daily life under the scrutiny of such a peculiar lens. The task of finding lookalikes must not have been easy – but the right of these people, without professional acting qualifications, to assume the roles and lives of the figures we see flashing on the screen in front of our eyes, is perhaps to be doubted even more.
To add to the authenticity of a largely unauthentic production, much of the filming was done in-situ, rather than in post-production. Perhaps the rustic techniques of 1968 are to be blamed, in that case, but the impression is given of a film made on a home camera – or the equivalent of the era.
Despite a large amount of scepticism, there is an effective attempt in the film to create a sense of community. The scenes depicting this feeling, such as the car races or the birthday party, show a unique capacity to elicit a sense of belonging from a set of static images, the creation of life out of still – of emotions, movement and relationships. This should not be overshadowed by the peculiarity of the film in general, as it remains a spectacular achievement – to recreate or imagine emotions in images where they have been lost.
The film, and this review, leave even more questions as the pondering continues. The film reels were left undeveloped for years, committing a family and village’s history to almost eternal darkness, hidden in dusty corners and rubbish heaps and destined to the shelves of history.
It’s also interesting to wonder why people became so interested in having their photo taken. In the film, people are queuing to have photographs taken, something which, when put in a modern context, sees whole careers and personalities (real and fake) portrayed through images of the self on the Internet. The origins of this desire for self-imagery are cemented in history, it seems.
The film ends with a scene showing a couple moving apartments, and a man, presumably the young boy who inherits the camera, throwing out the reels of film. Such disaffection for the story of his past and family leaves the viewer with a sense of confusion. If this man didn’t care about the people in the images, who are they to us, much further removed by time and space than this imagined man?
Cat on my Mind (2025) was screened as part of the 2026 goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film.
