Home for the Weekend

The ties that bind start to loosen in this acute, wonderfully acted work from Hans-Christian Schmidt (Requiem, VIFF 06), centring on a bourgeois clan shaken by the mother’s dinner-table revelation.

Marko (Lars Eidinger, Everyone Else) travels from Berlin, son in tow, to Recklinghausen, Western Germany, to visit Marko’s parents, Gitte (Corinna Harfouch) and Guenther (Ernst Stoetzner), the latter of whom has recently sold his publishing house and is looking forward to a cozy retirement. Also present is Marko’s locally based dentist brother Jakob (Sebastian Zimmler) and his girlfriend Ella (Picco Von Groote). Mother has been ill—the doctors aren’t quite sure if it’s classic depression or something else—and when she announces over dinner that she stopped taking her medication two months before, her revelation is the catalyst for many more to come.

"How refreshing to see a family-in-crisis drama in which the usual angst and hysteria take a back seat to quiet perceptiveness and sensitivity… Melancholy, affecting and tender without being sentimental, the German chamber piece benefits from sterling ensemble work and characters that are both specific to their European upper middle-class milieu and utterly relatable… Economic use of music by German indie band The Notwist adds to the rewardingly subdued nature of the film, and Bogumil Godfrejow’s limber, mostly handheld camerawork encapsulates the keen balance of this satisfying drama between immersive scrutiny and thoughtful detachment."—David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter