They are three women in their early 30s with university degrees. They live in Leipzig and Berlin in (improvised) nineteenth-century tenements with finished floorboards. They are still amazed when they have responsibilities but also wish for more. They get along well with their mothers even if they don’t always understand them. They manage their lives and are relatively happy: For three years, Beatrice Möller accompanied these three women day in and day out and documented the slight but important changes that arrive in one’s thirties. At first everything still seems possible, but then it becomes clear that not everything will stay the same. Claudia, a young editor-in-chief for a Leipzig city magazine, thinks about starting a family. Soon she moves in with her boyfriend and they have a baby. Actor Marie-Sarah loves constant change and is proud of the fact that she has moved 29 times. Yet she feel the weigh of constant financial insecurity. Mona, who moved from Palestine to Germany, oscillates between her desire to savour her new independence and her to need to live a meaningful life. The film’s protagonists are familiar to us: they could be our neighbours, friends, or sisters. Their heaviness and aimlessness is just as familiar as it is slightly vexing. Alongside the young women, their mothers, who lovingly but with some confusion about the life decisions made by their daughters, also get a chance to speak. Unlike the mothers in the film, Beatrice Möller does not pass judgement on this “indecisive generation.” EVERYTHING WE WANT is more about self-understanding, a glance around the room, or a conversation with friends about the question: is it also like that for you?

Hendrike Bake

Translation: Carla McDougall