Repeated, characteristic physical posture or movement pattern of a character — defines their habitus. Brecht used it to make social position visible.
The gestus of a character is what you see before they speak — their posture, the way they occupy space, their movement patterns. On set, it works like this: you observe how your actor sits, how they raise their hand, whether they lower or raise their head. This is not random mimicry. The gestus carries information about status, origin, psychological state. Brechtian theater theory made this clear — but it works the same way in film, only more subtly. A female worker walks differently than a CEO. Someone fearful hunches over, someone powerful opens up. This is not acting in the classical sense, but a social code in the body.
In directing, gestus work means: you don't look at emotions, but at posture. You don't ask your actor 'How do you feel now?', but 'How does this person sit? What tension is in their neck?' This is particularly effective in political, socially critical films — but also in everyday dramas. If a character is constantly justifying themselves, their gestus shows this through constant tensing, a 'making oneself small.' This is narrative through posture. In editing, it then becomes a rhythmic element: cutting frequencies sometimes follow the gestus, not the dialogue pause.
Practically on set: let your performer run through the scene and observe which physical habitus naturally emerges. Sometimes it's already present and exactly right. Sometimes you have to refine it — not through psychological babble, but through concrete physical instruction: 'Your shoulder stays up. You breathe shallowly. You don't look away completely, but you don't look directly either.' This creates tension in the body, which reads on screen as character information. Work with repetition: a gestus must be recognizable, must be repeated, so that the audience reads it as characteristic and not as a random movement.
The gestus differs from mere sequence of movements — this is important. A movement can be an action (opening a door), a gestus is the characteristic quality of that movement. Some directors work intensively on gestus — the results are then characters who are immediately readable, without much exposition being necessary. This saves time and sharpens the visual narrative.