I Was at Home, But

Charting a widowed mother’s unusual reaction to the disappearance of her teenage son, this unconventional family portrait by Angela Schanelec took home this year’s Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Director.

One of the Berlin School’s leading lights alongside Maren Ade and Christian Petzold, no one makes films quite like Schanelec (The Dreamed Path, MIFF 2017); her intimate observations, stylised imagery and often elliptical narratives prove equally challenging, playful and enthralling. The German filmmaker is at her best with this insightful and amusing drama – complete with a mid-movie treatise on the state of cinema and a hauntingly beautiful sequence set in a cemetery at night.

Both scenes feature Astrid (an exceptional Maren Eggert, also in The Dreamed Path), who’s trying to juggle her grief with raising her two kids. Realising that life goes on but that her middle-class existence isn’t everything she’s dreamed of, she’s forced to confront her malaise when 13-year-old Phillip returns suddenly.

“A confident doubling-down on the uber-distinctive style Schanelec has evolved over her two-and-a-half-decade directorial career … calmly, radically mystifying.” – Sight & Sound