Goethe-Institut London Online Presentation
Summer, sun, a garden, a pool. An idyllic setting for lazy days spent in harmony by 10-year old Elli and her father. But already the first close-up of Elli suggests that things are not quite what they seem. As the days pass and we also follow the two characters into their elegant bungalow-home, their relationship seems more and more ambiguous and unsettling. Then one night Elli leaves, gets lost, then finds a new home, but things are even more off-kilter here. Does any of this become less or more disturbing once we realise that Elli is not a child but an android?
Awarded the special jury prize of the Berlinale Encounters section in 2020, Austrian-born Sandra Wollner’s second film does not pose the question of what makes the child-android at its centre human. It rather observes what human qualities and memories we are capable of projecting onto a robot to fulfil our want for love and connection. How much of our interactions with others are based on projection anyhow? What does technology change, if anything? Wollner explores these questions through a series of highly charged, yet strangely restrained scenes which are pervaded by a persistent sense of uncanniness and unease.
Austria, Germany 2020, colour, 94mins, with English subtitles
Director: Sandra Wollner. With Dominik Warta, Lena Watson, Ingrid Burkhard, Jana McKinnon.
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The film is only available for audiences in the UK.
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