Everything Will Be Okay

Eight-year-old Lea (Julia Pointner) lives with her mother (Marion Rottenhofer) and her mother's new boyfriend. Sometimes her father (Simon Schwarz) comes to collect her in the car and she stays overnight at his place. But today something is different. She's not quite sure what. He asks her about her news and she enjoys telling him what she's looking forward to at school. They go to a toy store and he lets her chose two giant Playmobil sets. They pop into a photo booth to have fun getting some pictures taken. Then he asks her to be patient because they have some forms to fill out. They'll go to the funfair later. Everything will be okay.

A story of desperate action and its awful emotional consequences, Alles Wird Gut perfectly balances the concerns of its various characters and benefits from central performances that are simply stunning. Schwarz is a well-established actor with lots of great work behind him; Pointner is a newcomer but more than holds her own. Her shift from a lighthearted child looking forward to a fun day out to a sullen, frightened one trying to protect herself but also take care of the adults around her is heartbreaking. Patrick Vollrath's astute script lays bare the selfishness of the father's actions but never condemns him. There's not a shred of malice in any character here, just slowly unfolding tragedy.

In just half an hour, Alles Wird Gut captures a story, a set of emotional experiences, an unresolved and perhaps unresolvable social problem that many longer films have wrestled with to far less effect. We never learn how things broke down between Lea's parents. We don't know whether or not her father's established access arrangements are threatened. We don't know what will happen afterwards - we just get a snapshot of a small group of people at a pivotal point in their lives. It's all we need.

See this film at the first opportunity you get.