North American Premiere
With death looming for both elders of the Lunies clan, their estranged children are forced to meet once more, while dealing with their own tumultuous dramas. Tom (Lars Eidinger), a conductor in his early forties, is working on a composition called “Dying,” while also acting as the surrogate father of his ex-girlfriend’s child. Meanwhile, his sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) begins a destructive affair with a married man. As their lives converge, age-old enmities rise to the surface.
In this epic, three-hour saga by German director Matthias Glasner, Tolstoy’s maxim that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” gets further confirmation. Divided into discrete chapters, the film is a tense drama of impressive scale and ambition. By turns morbid, darkly comic, and unexpectedly invigorating, it is a film about the inescapable vicissitudes of family: those people we can’t seem to live with, but also can’t seem to do without.
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, Berlin 2024
Managers to be exceedingly funny, often in some of its darkest moments, as well as expectedly sad.
Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter
Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg, Ronald Zehrfeld, Robert Gwisdek, Anna Bederke
Germany
2024
In German with English subtitles
At International Village
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Jan Krüger, Ulf Israel, Matthias Glasner
Screenwriter
Matthias Glasner
Cinematography
Jakub Bejnarowicz
Editor
Heike Gnida
Production Design
Tamo Kunz
Original Music
Lorenz Dangel
Matthias Glasner
Matthias Glasner was born in Hamburg in 1965. In the 90s, he made the hipster trilogy Die Mediocren (1995), Sexy Sadie (1996), and Fandango (2000), all of which premiered at the Berlinale. This was followed by the films Der Freie Wille (2006), This is Love (2009), and Gnade (2011). Glasner has directed several television series including KDD – Kriminaldauerdienst (Grimme Prize and German Television Prize), Blochin – Die Lebenden und die Toten, Landgericht (Grimme Prize), and season two of Das Boot.
Filmography: Die Mediocren (1995); Sexy Sadie (1996); Fandango (2000); Der Freie Wille (2006); This is Love (2009); Gnade (2011)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The End of the Internet + Installation & Talk
Forget the cloud. "The net" is a far more accurate metaphor for the www. Filmmaker Dylan Reibling meets the hacktavists around the world fighting for the independent flow of information free from censorship and exploitation.
Lucid
Art student Mia is struggling with a make-or-break assignment, a self-portrait. It's only when grandma lets slip that her mom used to hypnotize her as a child to blank out the bad bits that she realizes the severity of the challenge...
Two Pianos
Once promising concert pianist Mathias (François Civil) returns to his native Lyon after a long absence. He's here to pay homage to his mentor, Elena (Charlotte Rampling). But a chance encounter with an old flame sends him spiraling.
The Richest Woman in the World
Isabelle Huppert plays cosmetics CEO Marianne in this teasingly ambivalent satire inspired by the Bettancourt Affair, when L'Oreal heir Francoise Bettancourt scandalized France by frittering away her fortune on a notorious celebrity photographer.
