Awarded the Jury Prize in Cannes, Mascha Schilinski’s haunting film draws us into the lives of four young women living in rural Germany at different times during the last century. Sensuous and atmospheric, it makes palpable the pervasive presence of violence and misogyny that shadow their lives from one generation to the next.  

An isolated farmstead in the Altmark region of Saxony-Anhalt is the anchor point of this film, which tells the stories of four young women who, over the course of a century, spend their childhood or youth here: Alma, who grows up before the First World War, is afraid – because of the photograph of a dead little girl – that she too might die as a child; Erika, who lives on the farm in the 1940s, develops a strange fascination with her supposedly war-wounded uncle; in the 1980s, during the GDR era, Angelika experiences her sexual awakening  and an increasing longing for death; in the present, it is Nelly, who has moved from Berlin to the countryside with her family, and whose seemingly idyllic life is shaken by dreams and a past accident that reoccurs.
None of this is told chronologically. Rather, the different time levels break through one another. In this way, the four life stories become intertwined in a subtle, flowing manner: as if through osmosis fears, pain and longings seem to penetrate from epoch to epoch, lingering beneath the surface leaving  long lasting traces. Death and violence in various forms permeate the destinies of these four women, whose experiences we follow entirely from their perspectives—through their sensory impressions, which gain immediate presence through the virtuosic use of sound and light effects and allow us to feel their physical vulnerability.
  Mascha Schilinski’s second feature film was, after eight years, the first German entry in the competition at Cannes 2025 and received the esteemed Jury Prize. In the same year, the film was selected as Germany’s submission for the 98th Academy Awards in the category “Best International Feature Film,” but did not win. A similar fate befell Maren Ade with Toni Erdmann, which screened in the 2016 Cannes competition, received the Prize of the Film Critics, and was later submitted for the Oscar. The two films could hardly be more different, yet each displays a unique cinematic vision in its own distinctive and compelling way.

Germany 2025, color, 154 min. With English subtitles.
Directed by Mascha Schilinski. Starring Hanna Heckt, Lea Drinda, Lena Urzendowsky, Laeni Geiseler, Susanne Wuest, and others.