Nicolai Thome

A long-separated German mother and her half-Turkish daughter are reconciled in a splendidly serene dramatic comedy.

After the German reunification: A widowed, unemployed archaeologist with two children and a single futurologist with a little daughter in Berlin fall in love at first sight and persistently and unwaveringly develop a life together. An equally unspectacular and rigorous examination of love as a crucial basis for private and political action.

Rudolf Thome’s idiosyncratic oeuvre was created with a continuity rare in German cinema – he has directed 28 feature-length films over more than four decades since 1968. The writing of the script for film no. 29 and the parallel efforts to secure financing form the thread that runs through this cinematic portrait, which consists wholly of conversations and observations around Thome’s home, a converted farm in Brandenburg. The filmmaker is nothing if not forthcoming, and the viewer has the opportunity to experience him in various other roles: as a gardener, a father, a cyclist, and a performer of his own persona.