Ilja Pletner
The air has been sweaty forweeks in the conference center of Baguio City (Philippines) where the new chess world champion will be determined in the broiling summer of 1978. Viktor Kortchnoi (47) and Anatoly Karpov (27) are facing each other in a match that will decide who is going to take the title home. Karpov back to Russia and Kortschnoi, well, that ́s a controversial matter...
Six intertwined people struggle with their own sincerity, and, in so doing, unravel their secrets and the lies they live.
Berlin. Grisha, a Russian-German boy, fools around with a toygun. The longer he plays, the further he is thrust into an altered reality. The boundaries between the present and the past start to blur. Images from a bygone Berlin appear; streets and buildings still carry the memories of war. Suddenly, he is caught in a nightmare of another lifetime.
In the form of an anthology film, travelers and hosts encounter one another in four different places in Europe via an internet-based hosting network called “Couchsurfing”. In Stuttgart, the Swabian publisher Annette meets the Polish master in the art of living Pawel, while her niece Nina is expecting a big fiesta in Spain, but meets only a deaf old man. In parallel Matti, a freshly minted high school graduate, hopes to find a great adventure in Paris, while the two Erasmus students Reka and Alma wander through Frankfurt desperately seeking their hosts. In the quest of adventure, diversion or just an authentic travel experience, encountering people whom one never would have met otherwise and so they are confronted not only with counterparts, but also with themselves.
Malchow, German Democratic Republic, 1980. 20-year-old Anne is hiding Juri, a deserter of the Red Army. The two fall in love with each other. But their love is threatened: there is an arrest warrant and possibly a death sentence waiting for Juri. The two leave the country and flee to the West, leaving Anne’s six-month-old daughter Inga behind. Inga grows up with her grandparents and thinks that her mother died during a swimming accident. 25 years later she meets the literature professor Robert, who sends her on the trail of her past. He met Inga’s mother Anne during one of his seminars. At first Inga is resistant, but then she asks for Robert’s help. Together they take off on a journey through Germany, in search of Inga’s mother Anne...
