Blue Window
Germany, 2016, 85min.
Director: Sheri Hagen
With: Marko Dyrlich, Kristin Alia Hunold, Emilio Sakraya, Dietrich Hollinderbäumer, Anne Zander
Amid winter landscapes and inhabited silences, beings search for one another through absence. The places themselves seem to carry a secret memory, where time, wounds, and invisible bonds echo back and forth.
Poster "Fenster Blau" | © Equality Film GmbH
Still from "Fenster Blau" | © Equality Film GmbH
Still from "Fenster Blau" | © Equality Film GmbH
Synopsis
afterMuttermale Fenster blau by Sasha Marianna Salzmann
Nineteen-year-old Ljöscha travels to the island of Norderney in search of the father he has never known. All that remains of him is an old photo album—and an absence that has shaped Ljöscha's entire life. Beneath his confident and optimistic exterior lies a profound longing to understand who his father is and why he was never part of his life.
On the ferry, he meets Nele, a deaf young woman whose vitality and carefree spirit stand in striking contrast to the island's bleak landscape. Dark clouds hang over Norderney, the sea is rough, and the beach lies deserted. The barren scenery reflects the emotional weight awaiting Ljöscha.
Instead of finding his father, he finds his father's father - his grandfather. The old man reacts with uncontrollable rage when he hears Ljöscha's name and orders him to leave. But Ljöscha refuses to walk away. Reluctantly, his grandfather allows him to stay. Between them, a deeply contradictory relationship begins to unfold, shaped by rejection and compassion, resentment and affection. As they grow closer, it becomes increasingly clear that the old man is guarding a secret that has haunted the family for decades.
Running parallel is the story of Lena and Leo. Nineteen-year-old Lena lives with the devastating consequences of severe childhood trauma. Together with Leo, a man nearly twenty years her senior, she leads an isolated existence in a small apartment filled with countless wooden sculptures—obsessively carved likenesses of Lena. At first, Leo appears to be her partner. Gradually, however, a disturbing truth emerges, drawing both storylines inexorably toward one another.
As Ljöscha comes closer to the truth about his father, he finds himself at the heart of a multigenerational family secret marked by abuse, guilt, and decades of silence. The answers he has been searching for will forever change his understanding of family, identity, and where he comes from.
When Ljöscha meets Nele again at the harbor pier, she becomes his counterbalance. Bold, spirited, and full of life, she offers him something that has long been lost within his family: the hope that even the deepest cycles of inherited trauma can be broken.
