Munich in the summer of 1967. The journalist Katharina receives a visit from her French friend Anne. They go on excursions, visit cafés, meet friends and attend parties. In conversations, they explore the opportunities for female emancipation in a male-dominated society. The essayistic feature film places five types of women at the center of the episodic plot. According to Christa Maerker, this is the first feminist film in the Federal Republic of Germany, while for Frieda Grafe the film shows “how much we are lived instead of living ourselves”. Neun Leben hat die Katze did not make it to the movie halls at the time – due to the insolvency of the distributor. The Deutsche Kinemathek re-released the film in the 1990s in collaboration with Basis-Filmverleih in a version made from the only surviving Technicolor copy. A cinematic experience that is far superior in reproducing the wild colors of the original, however, is the result of the digitalization based on the original Techniscope negative, which was realized at ARRI in 2014.

Martin Körber