Mascha‘s (Aylin Tezel) German boyfriend Elias (Slavko Popadic) complains that he doesn‘t know anything about her, that she never talks about herself. To him it‘s a sign of a lack in trust. Maybe it is, because Mascha doesn‘t like to commit herself to anything. On the other hand, Mascha can‘t be easily reduced to one place, one story. She is an immigrant German, fled from Azerbaijan, is affected by childhood trauma but is in good hands now, Jewish, and at home in many languages, places and cultures as a soon-to-be interpreter. She talks to her best friend Cem (Sohel Altan Gol), who is also an interpreter, in Turkish, otherwise it‘s German, Russian, English, French, Spanish and Italian. She is in the top of her class, likes to party and dreams of having a career in the UN. The film captures this multiplicity, which is also an emotional state, with quick location and timeline changes. The past and present interlock when Mascha is first just sitting with Elias in their kitchen, then alone in an apartment in Tel Aviv right after. We gradually find out how she got to this point. Elias got sick after a sporting accident and died from complications, and Mascha is now fleeing, so to speak – to even more places, languages, relationships, conflicts. Based on the eponymous bestseller by Olga Gryasnova from 2012, Pola Beck portrays an equally fast and sensitive global generation that continually recomposes its own coordinate systems of “home“ and “family.“ When Mascha‘s most important anchor Elias goes away just as she was possibly going to let him in, the coordinate systems fall apart and catapult her into a journey that tests what helps, what lasts and what remains.

Toni Ohms

Translation: Elinor Lewy