

Agnes, a teacher from the Hessian provinces, has come to Berlin to identify a dead girl who might be Lydia, her runaway daughter. It turns out not to be Lydia, but Agnes stays in the city anyway. Still frantically looking, she comes a young stray called Ines who no longer leaves her side...
Acting
Kathleen Morgeneyer's raw, unsentimental grief will wreck you.
Direction
Speth's documentary background makes every frame feel stolen, not staged.
Cinematography
Berlin as liminal space—grey, unforgiving, oddly tender.

Director
Maria Speth
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Maria Speth spent years in documentary before her fiction debut; she cast non-actors from Berlin's streets for background roles and let the city breathe as its own character.
The film deliberately never shows Lydia, making her absence feel more haunting than any flashback could—Agnes's grief is for someone who exists only in her refusal to stop searching.