A new city, a new house – it could be a happy moment in a family's life. Nina, a doctor, has taken a few days of vacation. House-husband Frieder is laying tile. Their daughter Charlotte plays in her new room. But Nina feels alienated in the half-empty rooms and decides to drive away – without letting her family know. She visits her brother in their parents' vacation home, moves aimlessly through a surreal mountain landscape, and finds herself with an aging tennis star in a sports hotel, a concrete UFO from another era. Nina's attempt to break out does not lead to an existential revolt, but to a fleeting encounter between two people who no longer feel at home in their worlds. Like a somnambulist, she returns, step by step, to her family. Ulrich Köhler's second feature film is a story about middle-class lack of orientation. It continues the theme of his debut, Bungalow: Isabelle Menke's Nina is like a big sister of the late-adolescent deserter Paul, who goes AWOL in passive resistance. But what was a game with few consequences for Paul has greater effects for Nina's generation. Her dilemma unfolds in radical openness, with no psychologizing explanations. Cameraman Patrick Orth's long, floating images draw us into a disturbing but frighteningly familiar world.
Production: ö Filmproduktion Löprich und Schlösser; ZDF (Das kleine Fernsehspiel)
Screenplay: Ulrich Köhler
Cinematographer: Patrick Orth
Editor: Kathrine Granlund
Cast: Isabelle Menke, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Amber Bongard, Trystan Wyn Pütter, Elisa Seydel, Ilie Năstase
Format, screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.85, Color
Running time: 88 minutes, 24 frames/sec.
Language: German