Alle Anderen | Germany | 119 minutes
Director/Screenplay: Maren Ade
Producers: Janine Jackowski, Dirk Engelhardt, Maren Ade
Photography: Bernhard Keller
Editor: Heike Parplies
With: Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Nicole Marischka, Mira Partecke, Atef Vogel, Paula Hartmann, Carina Wiese
Festivals: Berlin, New York, Seattle, Vancouver 2009
In German with English subtitles
Censors rating tbc
“I wanted to make a film about a young love, and find out something about modern relationships, where the roles are not defined anymore.” Writer/director Maren Ade’s account of a romantic sexual relationship teetering on the brink of social conformity is contemporary, funny and unnervingly close to the bone. Young architect Chris and his band publicist girlfriend Gitti (a superb, award-winning performance from Birgit Minichmayr) are basking in the sun at his parent’s Sardinian retreat, reveling in the freedom of not being ‘like everyone else’. An encounter with a couple who robustly embody more traditional gender roles sets off a crisis: is Chris’s refusal of professional compromise unmanly? Is the rebellious Gitti inappropriately unsupportive of her man? Ade was born in 1976. Her shrewd portrait of her generation’s hunger for originality is itself a consummately original work.
“A delicious, acutely observed dissection of the mercurial emotional and psychological ties between two young lovers.” — Peter Brunette, Hollywood Reporter