14/03/2025 - German director Annelie Boroș foregrounds the fight fought by those who want to live their lives valuing that which consumerist society rejects out of fear or ignorance

Presented in an international premiere within the Focus competition of Geneva’s FIFDH, German director Annelie Boroș’s first feature-length documentary The Tender Revolution is an opportunity to discuss the precarious nature of “care” work. This word covers a great many people who work in the shadows, often seven days a week, taking care of those (elderly people, people with different abilities, neurodivergent people, etc.) who can’t take care of themselves, and the film follows four such idealists who, instead of considering themselves victims of a system solely interested in profit, have made the decision to fight, to shout about their indignation, advocating a kind of tenderness which they’d like to be our default.

The inspiration for the film stems from a personal tragedy which affected the director when she was first making the movie: the suicide of her dear friend and flatmate. It was an incredibly painful event which led her to think about how ill-adapted our overly individualistic, greedy and rowdy world is for some people. But what if her friend could have chosen a world in which to live, where she felt protected? How would she have imagined it? Undoubtedly more inclusive and kinder, generous and less frenetic, a utopian world built patiently and silently by people who care for those in need every day.

To find out what this world could look like, the director opens the floor to four people who have placed caring at the heart of their lives. There’s Arnold, a middle-aged man who lives in Hamburg where he looks after his disabled son, day in, day out, in highly precarious conditions, backed up against a wall by a system which punishes his presumed inactivity rather than valuing his work in any way; Bożena, a full-time carer who’s had to leave her daughter behind in Poland to take care of other people’s relatives; Amanda, an indigenous activist worried about the climate crisis which is destroying the ecosystem in her native Peru; and Samuel, who’s in a wheelchair but is full of energy, who loves to have fun with his friends and who forges relationships which are as close as they are respectful with his many carers.

Despite not knowing one another, Arnold, Bożena, Amanda and Samuel all experience the same feelings of abandonment and non-recognition for their all-consuming work which drains them physically (“we take care of other bodies while ours suffer”, Bozena explains at one point) as well as emotionally (attachment to their patients, having to adapt to different personalities and bodies, sharing in other people’s pain). As Samuel eloquently explains when talking about people with different abilities: “everything is precious, it’s not just about being useful”, an observation which feeds into the protagonists’ feeling of having had enough. With the few, heart-rending means available to them, they’ve decided to protest, expressing their rejection of a system which claims not to have the resources needed to support them. But what would become of our society without them? What would become of our humanity and of our planet without the tenderness, care and love which motivates them?

Speaking directly to the director, Arnold, Bożena, Amanda and Samuel show us the path to a fairer world in which they should definitely play leading roles.

The Tender Revolution was produced by Kinescope Film in co-production with Das Kleine Fernsehspiel and Viktor Schimpf Filmproduktion.

(Translated from Italian)