In developing Retrospection one central question guided the process: how do you show what someone themselves can no longer distinguish between reality and memory?

The film follows Rein, an older man who, after the death of his wife, gradually withdraws deeper into his own world. When his granddaughter Anna comes to visit, old war traumas are reactivated, and past and present begin to blur.

The direction focused on silence, suggestion, and subjective experience. Together with the cast and crew, the aim was to find a style of acting in which subtle shifts in behavior and gaze carry the inner conflict. The cinematography also adopts an approach in which reality slowly becomes unstable, without this ever being made explicit.