Schlamassel

1997, seven years after the “Wende”. It is the year in which Johanna's grandmother dies and the rifts in her family come to light. Johanna's (Mareike Beykirch) soul is raging. No matter what she does, it is wrong. Suddenly it's supposed to be wrong to tell off Uncle's heir hunter at Grandma's funeral. Johanna doesn't give herself time, not to grieve and not to calm down. Torn apart by ambivalent feelings, she runs herself ragged in private and at work as a better intern in the local editorial office of a Brandenburg newspaper, usually hiding behind her camera. When the original photo of a concentration camp guard falls into her hands, she seizes the opportunity to get close to the now 80-year-old Anneliese Deckert (Lore Stefanek). On her way to Deckert, Johanna has no idea that she is about to bump into the whole family and cause a stir by returning the photo. Director Sylke Enders, herself born in Brandenburg, has made films such as “Mondkalb” and “Schönefeld Boulevard” about growing up in the East and in a Germany that still doesn't seem quite united today. The encounter of “Schlamassel” (“misfortune”, the opposite of the Yiddish word Massel = happiness) also becomes the subject when the radio talks about Castor transports, the attitude of the people has something suspicious about it, while bald-headed neo-Nazis act up in the village pub. “What a mess that was,” says the old woman as she opens her photo album. “If that's how they see it,” Johanna replies, and you have to watch her face. Johanna later has a panic attack. Not because of the old lady, but because the toxic climate and the notorious lack of love in her own family become too much for her. What is resistant and successful about Sylke Enders' telling of this story is that there is no final confrontation, no TV drama-like revelation scenario. Nothing is spelled out. Sylke Enders looks and shows. In her films, she has patience for people you don't like at first glance. [...] The old woman, her daughters, they know that things have happened that are better kept quiet if you don't want trouble. Johanna knows what is being kept quiet, but she sees something else besides the repression and the desire to forget, which throws her off balance: the difficult relationship between mothers and daughters. [...] It's worth watching “Schlamassel” for Mareike Beykirch's performance alone. The film has a great truthfulness, without making itself important, without exhibiting its historical and contemporary content, without the usual dull explanatory dramaturgy.” (Peter Körte, on: faz.net)