West Berlin rebels face the one conformity they can't escape: a baby.
Manfred and Hilke live a live perfectly complied with each other in West Berlin. They managed to elude from the bourgeois conformity, which they loath. But when Hilke finds out about her pregnancy she estranges from her partner. Trying to keep her former life as it was, she desperately looks all over the city to get an abortion.
Acting
Sabine Sinjen's silent desperation in clinic waiting rooms.
Direction
Schamoni's cramped framing makes bohemian life feel like a trap.
Production
Authentically grimy 1966 West Berlin locations, no period gloss.
Director
Ulrich Schamoni
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released two years before West Germany's 1968 abortion reform, the film was practically documentary. Schamoni shot in actual underground clinics with non-actors who had lived this.
The title 'Es' ('It') refers to the fetus but also the unnameable thing destroying their relationship—Hilke never says 'baby,' only 'the situation.'
DE
