Peter Trabner is always sensational. Not just in the improvised Germany mumblecore universe, but also in scripted productions like LUCKY LOSER. He plays Mike here, who is having a life crisis. His separation from his wife Claudia (Annette Frier) has lasted for 9 years, he has a stupid job at a car wash, he’s losing his apartment, and what does he do? He goes camping with his 15 year old daughter, hoping that Claudia will come back to him. Trabner makes Mike very charming and intense in all of his simmering dubiousness.

Nico Sommer, who is also a mumblecore veteran since SILVI, directed the film and proves that he can tell a perfectly timed comedy outside the wild world of improv with a fresh dynamic. On the camping trip, where there is absolutely no privacy and where freedom and autonomy rule, things get intense. His daughter Hannah invites her boyfriend Otto, who is older and black. Claudia meets him and so does her partner Thomas, played by Kai Wisinger with superb sleaziness. Mike is in the cross fire: he is forced to recognize that his daughter is a sexual being! Otto, the German from Ghana, has to be saved from Nazis. Claudia has to reunite with him. How does the neighbor manage to bring home a different woman every night?

Interpersonal friction is unavoidable in narrow spaces, but getting closer is also possible. Mike, the loser without any drive has to rattle himself before he can have a happy end.

Harald Mühlbeyer

Translation: Elinor Lewy