Manekino Film

Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.

Herculane Baths, one of the oldest resorts in Europe, the place where, a few centuries ago, kings and queens were diving in the healing waters, became a maze where people get lost while looking for something better. Relu, Mitica and Gelu, three masseurs, are tour guides through the maze of an Eastern Europe garden of Eden.

Paul (23) and Radu (53) are a couple in crisis. They are visited every day in their home by a small film crew. Together with the filmmaker, they go through a “deconstruction of memory” process, via procedures such as intimate video diaries, exercises inspired from family constellations, re-enactments of key memories and dreams, in an attempt to make sense of their explosive relationship.