The Fatherless

A large, somewhat dilapidated house in the country. Although Niki, a doctor living and working in Munich, manages to arrive at his father’s deathbed just in time, the man who spawned him fails to give him the belated acknowledgment and love for which he so longs. Shortly after the father dies, his other grown-up children arrive. These include Vito, an extrovert, and idealistic drifter; Mizzi, who is much younger and suffers from a neurophysical disorder and – although nobody expected it, even Kyra, who is the product of the father’s heady days of alternative living and free love. Niki and Vito haven’t seen this sister since their parents’ acrimonious separation twenty-three years ago. Kyra, who was eight years old at the time, was ejected from the family home together with her burdensome mother shortly after their father’s then girlfriend had given birth to Mizzi. Kyra now discovers that her existence was kept from the new-born half-sister right up until the present. Good reason for Kyra to leave the site of so many secrets, lies and so much rejection. What persuades her to stay on for the funeral is her curiosity about the living, breathing part of her past and her longing for a continuation of what she remembers as a carefree relationship with her brothers and sister. But their careful attempts to bond once more are over- shadowed by Niki’s tacit guilt about Kyra’s expulsion, as well as a secret that surrounded the family’s disintegration, about which the brothers and sis- ters, for various nebulous reasons, have never spoken. –Berlinale