Au loin, les lumières

Simply amazing storytelling. Sad and true told. A mustsee! Author takes you into the time where everything changes, people cheating each other out of misery and therefore messing up their own lives...fear and hope, love and despair...look for it in this movie and you won't be disappointed. Very important serious cinema still in a light way!

It is a slap in the face of all these rich, satisfied, egoistic, first world societies, who think that they are great, know better, and have more rights to live and spend than the poor on the other side of the fence.

We (some students, theatre people etc.) also tried recently to make a realistic feature, in our present times, shot on mini-DV, but this LICHTER is much, much better! I admire its realism, and how it could touch me within very few minutes, holding its tension for the whole time, and really caring for its characters. Believe me, I watch quite a lot of movies, but this does not happen very often.

It is a very sad observation of our economic situation, and the pressure which it forces on normal, small, everyday people. The need to make a living destroys their pride, their hopes, their humanity - and all this happens not far from the "Lights" ("Lichter") of the rich, promised land of wealth, where I live (I am blessed to live here) which is only a small distance away. Only a river to cross, but in fact the distance from poor to rich is nearly impossible to cross.

If you know "Lamerica" from Gianni Amelio or "Dekalog" aka "The Ten commandments" by Krzystof Kieslowski: "Lichter" has some similarities.

This episode film draws quite a realistic picture on life on both sides of the German-Polish border. To the group of Ukrainian, stranded at the polish side of river Oder, the lights of the German town of Frankfurt/Oder promise a new life, wealth and freedom in the West. And nearly impossible to reach, as they cannot hope for asylum there. But life on the other side is also not as easy as it seems. We meet Ingo, who tries to make some money building up a mattress store and fails miserably; Katharina who has fled from the children's home and now makes her living of smuggling cigarettes over the border. On the other side of the river, there's the polish father who tries almost everything to get together the money for his daughter's communion dress; student Beata who works as a translator and also fulfills the more special wishes of her customers, as long as she gets paid. During the film, some of these people's ways cross, some don't, some try to help the others, some betray them, everyone struggles to make the best out of it for himself whether he or she is Polish, German or Ukrainian. One other thing struck my mind: In one scene of the film, Beata meets her German ex-boyfriend; when they start arguing, she shouts at him in Polish. He doesn't understand her and tells her to speak German and she answers: "If you had really loved me, you'd have learned Polish a long time ago!" He just says: "You can't be serious." I found this exemplary for many of the people, especially the Germans, that they don't understand the others, and they don't want to try. The people on the other side of the border, or those connected to it like German-Ukrainian translator Sonya, seem to help each other more, even though they also try to make their own profit by it, sometimes. Maybe this is the difference between the two worlds on the two sides of the river.

This movie reflects on the situation around the border between Poland and Germany. The fate of many single characters creates a picture of life in this region: Some Russians want to cross the border illegal to get into Germany, a company wants to build a new factory, a Polish taxi driver desperately needs money to buy his daughter a communion dress, and so on.

All this is very well written and directed. All the characters are true to life, and through the multiperspectivic reflection on the situation the movie works very well. Good acting performances do the rest. The one minor critical point I have is: The stories are standing on their own. I think the movie would have been better if they would have been connected in more points than just happening in one region. So the movie gets a 9 out of 10- but is still worth watching and very touchy.

The acting was good, and the story kind of interesting.

I don´t think it is an important film, but it gives you something to think about. To think about human behaviour etc.

To be a really good film I missed a lot of explanations. For example why the family wanted to leave the Ukraine. Why they took a little baby with them? I wouldn`t make such a dangerous journey with a baby if it wouldn`t be really necessary. So the story about the Ukrainians didn`t work for me.

6/10.