Sterben

Tip from Kim

Films like this should be made much more so that we in our society can finally deal with issues that need to be talked about.

DYING is a magnificent film about the intensity of life in the face of the impertinence of death. It is tender and brutal, absurdly funny and deadly sad, terribly bitter and sometimes surprisingly beautiful.

STERBEN is about the Lunies family, which has long ceased to be a family. Only when Death, the old bastard, turns up do they meet again. Lissy Lunies (Corinna Harfouch), in her mid-70s, is quietly happy that her husband, who has dementia, is slowly wasting away in a home. But her new freedom is short-lived, as diabetes, cancer, kidney failure and the onset of blindness don't give her much time left. At the center of this panopticon of the doomed, however, is her son, conductor Tom Lunies (Lars Eidinger), in his early 40s. He is working on a composition called "Dying" with his depressive best friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdek) and the name becomes the program. At the same time, his ex-girlfriend Liv (Anna Bederke) makes him the surrogate father of her child, who could actually have been his own. Meanwhile, Tom's sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) begins a wild love affair with the married dentist Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld). The two share a love of alcohol, because nothing is more liberating than a dry martini. She refuses to work within the system and chooses lust and intoxication instead. But everything in life has its price.