Completed - GERMAN, LATVIAN - Drama - 100 minutes
A young woman travels with her mother to Riga to find out the truth about her mother’s past – and about her own identity.
Year of production : 2010 Director(s) : Hans STEINBICHLER Writer(s) : Robert THAYENTHAL, Josephin THAYENTHAL Cast : Juliane KÖHLER, Hannelore ELSNER, Karoline HERFURTH, David KROSS, Niklas KOHRT, Matthias BRANDT, Rüdiger VOGLER Producer(s) : Uli ASELMANN (die film gmbh), Ewa KARLSTRÖM (Sam Film), Andreas ULMKE SMEATON (Sam Film)
Marga (Hannelore Elsner) has never shown many feelings towards her daughter Sofia (Juliane Köhler). Now, however, she reveals fears, wounds and a deep longing for her long-dead husband Juris. She loses herself more and more in her forgetfulness and suddenly craves tenderness like a child. An unaccustomed situation for Sofia, who, after years of almost no contact with her mother, unexpectedly finds herself having to take care of her. A difficult situation, too: Marga can sometimes be brusque and sometimes funny; she lives now in the moment, now far away. As though yearning to be free of her memories, Marga begins relating stories of things that happened many years ago. Things that Sofia has never heard of. Prompted by a faint suspicion that the secrets of Marga’s past are important to understanding her own past, Sofia sets off for Riga with her mother at the spur of the moment. This is where Marga grew up and where she married Juris. But the more Sofia learns about her mother, the less certain she becomes about her own identity. As the past becomes clearer, it also emerges that what Marga had told her about their past together was nothing more than a story carved out of thin air…
Country(ies) : GERMANY Start of shooting : February 2010