Everyone Else

Colour, 35 mm
Germany, 2009, 119 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

At first glance, Gitti and Chris look like an ill-matched pair but they seem to understand one another. And while their Sardinian vacation offers more than one reason for splitting up, director Maren Ade makes it clear why these two young people are still together. The movie brings off with equal aplomb moments of social awkwardness, mutual openness, and the kind of incommunicable understanding that can only occur between people who are truly close. The protagonists betray a degree of adolescent spitefulness, but they truly yearn to belong to one another. After meeting a more charming couple, who are by all appearances happier and more successful, their insecurity grows, and their general frustration with life begins to pervade a relationship whose purpose was to bring them joy. Tragicomedy here is not a generic choice, but a reflection of the state of that relationship, which the film captures with exceptional sensitivity while not flinching from laying its characters bare.

About the director

Maren Ade (b. 1976, Karlsruhe) graduated in production and direction from Munich’s Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film. She directed her first short, Ebene 9, in 2000. Her graduation project became Ade’s debut feature The Forest for the Trees (Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen, 2003), which was awarded at Sundance and other festivals. As a producer, she worked on Sonja Heiss’s successful movie Hotel Very Welcome (2007), screened at the 2007 KVIFF. For her second film, Everyone Else, she contributed direction, production, and screenwriting.