Erste Ehe

Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.

A young photographer has fallen in love with his girlfriend's sister, throwing the trio into chaos.

Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

A few weeks after palliative nurse Hans spends New year's eve completely with new acquaintance Simone, she finds herself pregnant, unplanned. At another surprise meeting, handsome Hannes surprises her by reacting to the news by offering her to move into his fine home. While Hannes devotes himself further to terminal hospital patients, Simone lazily renovates the house, but somehow gets jealous of the neighbors and compromises everything.

A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.

The love of Olya and Oleh, a young queer Ukrainian couple, is put to the test when one partner’s gender transition collides with Russia’s full-scale invasion. As war narrows and challenges the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, they struggle to preserve their bond and sense of self. What does it mean to be a man in a country that is fighting for its identity and survival?