There‘s no long shot showing the high rise that Pierre Viago designed for the Berliner Hansa Quarter, but it‘s the focus of Miriam Bliese‘s feature debut with its flowing transition between interior and exterior and different floors. Sophie (Birte Schnöink) lives there, with her son Jakob, and Georg (Ole Lagerpusch), who is raising Jakob even though he‘s not his father. Bliese takes a look at a patchwork family falling in and out of love. She breaks up the story of an inevitable separation that becomes a bitter custody battle though time jumps, from the charms of the small and big moments of happiness to the emerging cracks and faults and back again. Along with the handful of climactic moments, the things that will later become decisive hang in the air like a storm in the clouds. It‘s a film about transitions, life‘s transit spaces, in an everyday and an emotional sense. Gardens, courtyards, entrance areas, doorsteps and corridors, conversations on the phone and the intercom. Who you might‘ve wanted to become, for yourself and for others, and what happens just happens in the meantime, between career ambitions and private desires. Schnöink and Lagerpusch‘s laconic acting fits into the scenic vignettes, the detachment from psychological realism creates a distance so even though it could seem tragic you find yourself laughing at what the characters do with each other, with themselves, and with what you call life.

Sebastian Markt (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy