A marriage so dead they need a child burglar to feel something.
Claudia and Georg Rattey, a married couple, have everything what people in their mid-thirties might wish for: a car, a farmhouse for vacations on the weekends, and their son Oliver. But their contentedness does not turn into happiness but into an inner void: Claudia and Georg have nothing left to say to each other and just live alongside each other. One day, they discover a ten-year old burglar in their half-finished vacation home.
Acting
Borbach and Bauer's wordless resentment is devastating.
Direction
Behrend lets silence do the violent work.
Production
The half-finished house as perfect metaphor for their marriage.
Director
Rainer Behrend
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in the final months of East Germany, the film captures a society's collapse mirrored in one marriage's implosion.
Davia Dannenberg, who played Simone, was literally ten years old—Behrend cast non-actors from the actual village for documentary-like unease.
DE
