One Breath

The private is political in "One Breath". At first sight a gripping drama showing two women on the edge, it induces a deeper want to understand, to change the way we live in Europe. Elena and Tessa are from very different backgrounds, but they share the same desire: happiness. Elena is young, well-educated but has no perspective in her home-country Greece. She needs to go abroad and Tessa, a thirtysomething mother and successful manager in Germany, married, is torn between happiness as an individual and a mother. Their encounter will change them completely.

Elena decides to move to Frankfurt. She has become pregnant by her Greek boyfriend. In order to abort her child, she needs money which is why she takes a job working as a nanny for Tessa and Jan. Despite a few struggles with toddler Lotte, Elena starts enjoying the time with the little girl and makes friends with Tessa. But in a tragically careless moment, Lotte disappears, stolen right in front of a Bakers. Elena is devastated, she escapes from her responsibility and her conscience and flees back to Athens. Tess, panicked and powerless at home, blind with grief and hatred, takes after her to Greece.

Christian Zübert has always been interested in overwhelmingly intensive emotions on screen, such as in rites-of-dying drama "Tour de Force" that played last year in Tallinn. With "One Breath" he has created another powerful drama, perfectly set in the time we live in. All humankind is sharing one breath. Is it?

Germany 2015