Fatherless, The

Two men and two women gather around their father’s deathbed. The four siblings meet at the home where they grew up and where several decades previously an attempt was made, drawing on the idealistic atmosphere of the 1960s, to live in an alternative community. But the community broke up and the individual members went their separate ways. The older daughter Kyra is seeing her siblings for the first time in 23 years, and everyone expects her presence to provoke unpleasant memories; no one wants to dredge up the past. Why, soon after her sister was born, did Kyra and her mother have to leave the community? Why did Kyra’s father Hans never respond to her letters? Family secrets, the past, and the present combine to create a tragic destiny of unfulfilled desire for an independent life. Although debut director Marie Kreutzer employs clichés typical of a family drama, she successfully moves beyond them through her depiction of vivid and entirely authentic characters. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)