18 February 2020

The Trouble with Being Born



Sandra Wollner : 2020

Somewhere in Central Europe, perhaps in the vicinity of Vienna, in the near future. Ten-year-old Elli is an android, as we soon learn. She takes shape through programming and this turns her into a fantasy figure. Firstly for a man she calls "Daddy" with whom she lies by the pool and for whom she dresses up in the house at the edge of the forest. Elli is the vessel for his memories, which mean nothing to her, but everything to him. Together they drift through the summer. One day he runs after a strange echo and gets lost in the darkness while Elli, who follows him, is picked up by strangers. A new identity awaits her, a new ghostly existence – as a blank screen onto which others can project their loss of the paradise that is childhood. The story of a machine and the ghosts we all carry within us. Sandra Wollner's second feature, her graduation film, was winner of the Special Jury Award when it premiered in the Encounters section at Berlin International Film Festival 2020.

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