Five Stars

With her camera and her old friend Ines Rastig, who has just lost everything, director Annekatrin Hendel checks into a hotel by the sea for four weeks. Room service brings fresh fruit every day, but things get serious between the women. When they met, Ines was a singer, painter, and photographer who was part of the legendary Prenzlauer Berg bohemian scene in East Berlin, but in recent years she has decided to devote herself entirely to her children and household. It is only her discovery of the internet and escape to Facebook that brings the world back into her life. Virtual communication, photography, and a relationship that exists only digitally become lifelines in an artist's life that has fallen silent. More existential than the current catastrophes, however, is a diagnosis that overshadows everything. After "Vaterlandsverräter" (Traitor to the Fatherland) and "Anderson" (Panorama 2014), director Annekatrin Hendel now turns her attention once again to an East Berlin biography. A film about a friendship between two women and a life balance between illness and Facebook, between divorce and online love. Two friends in a hotel room by the sea. Four existential weeks with the camera. The questions revolve around the often glamorous past in East Berlin, the current struggle with a diagnosis, and the damn internet that refuses to work.