Longing

Valeska Grisebach, whose rugged and uncompromising last feature, Western (2017) garnered worldwide festival and critical praise, based the story of her sophomore feature on the results of a years-long anthropological project—a series of extensive interviews on the subject of love and on the film’s titular theme of “longing”. Remarkably and painstakingly cast, the non-professional actors who were handpicked by Grisebach inhabit their characters seamlessly, lending to the film’s seemingly effortless achievement of heightened realism. With purpose, patience and precision, Longing affectingly folds aspects of vérité into its elliptical formal design, brilliantly revealing as much through its negative spaces as its vignettes of lifelike drama, peeling open archetypal notions of love and woe to reveal deeply intimate explorations of character, class, and passion.  

Image © Peter Rommel Filmproduktion