Essay film, 4K, DCP with 5.1 sound, 25', 2025

Direction, camera, sound: Lisa Mazenauer
Production: Chus Martínez (HGK FHNW), Lisa Mazenauer
Editing: Lisa Mazenauer, Orsola Valenti
Sound design: Lisa Mazenauer, Thy Truong, Rico Langjahr
Re-recording: Till Aldinger
Color grading: Patrischa Freuler
Graphic design: Alice Monguzzi

With the support of Fachausschuss Film und Medienkunst Kanton Basel-Stadt and the Gwaertler Grant

Through archival fragments and gestures of remembrance, The Right to Forget explores how silence and denial shape both intimate and national memory.
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When the filmmaker asks her father about her Swiss grandfather’s gold mines, he answers clearly: all the documents were burned, nothing remains, it must be forgotten. Her grandfather, Hans Mazenauer, was connected to Mobutu Sese Seko and the mining business in former Zaire during the 1980s. As she attempts to retrace his trade, the void in the family archives begins to echo a broader societal question.

The film questions the ethics of inheritance, Switzerland’s involvement in extractivism, and the boundary between remembering and letting go.