Isabelle Stever

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.

Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.

A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.

A young couple argue through their own wedding party.

A young photographer has fallen in love with his girlfriend's sister, throwing the trio into chaos.

A few weeks after palliative nurse Hans spends New year's eve completely with new acquaintance Simone, she finds herself pregnant, unplanned. At another surprise meeting, handsome Hannes surprises her by reacting to the news by offering her to move into his fine home. While Hannes devotes himself further to terminal hospital patients, Simone lazily renovates the house, but somehow gets jealous of the neighbors and compromises everything.

Olha and Oleh live in Ukraine as LGBTQ+ individuals. However, Russia's war of aggression is putting the couple's identity and love to the test.

The bourgeois couple Esther and Michael have got themselves caught up in a seemingly ironic game of power, provocation and sexuality. Esther is already on the brink of madness when a young artist arrives. Requiem for something which is very small is a psychological horror-drama, with a cultural-political morale, and musical interludes.

A Berlinale Kompagnon-Fellowship winner.