18/02/2026 - BERLINALE 2026: Two urban creatives lead a very cool and entertaining life – at least on the surface of this satisfying and aesthetically pleasing film by Anna Roller

Pastel colours are pleasant, aren’t they? They soothe the eye and promise harmony, but rarely do they provoke ecstasy. Yet life occasionally demands more than subtle attractiveness – it demands intensity, connection and actually living, rather than designing one’s existence. Paradoxically, Tanja (Sylvaine Faligant) and Jerome (Jannis Niewöhner), the protagonists of Anna Roller’s Allegro Pastell, which has premiered in the Panorama strand of the Berlinale, don’t lead a stable, bourgeois way of life. They are not trapped in tedious office jobs or stifled by routine. They party, pop pills, get drunk fairly often, wear urban-indie trendy clothes and live in urban-indie flats – even though they’re already in their mid-thirties. But something feels very bloodless in their carefully curated freedom, as if their lives were projects, and nothing more.

For Roller, this setting is more than an occasion to create an aesthetically pleasing film. With pastel-like subtlety but meticulous deliberation, she paints a portrait of a generation that never learned how to take risks, be spontaneous, or have a genuine connection with their own emotions or other people. Allegro Pastell is an adaptation of the celebrated eponymous novel by Leif Randt, who also penned the script, and recalls other works – the recent Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico and the classic Things: A Story of the Sixties by Georges Perec.

Tanja and Jerome’s lives are unfolding in 2018, before the war in Ukraine, AfD’s full rise to power and COVID-19 – a time that inspires nostalgia not even a decade later. Through inner monologues, Randt and Roller show the protagonists’ dexterity in self-reflection – especially Tanja, who, as a writer, excels in such things. She observes at one point, “Anticipating melancholy is the best emotion,” which is a beautiful line, but nothing more. While intellectually agile, they both suffer from emotional blindness; they don’t seem to grasp what they’re missing.

As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the main cause of this is the fact that they are frozen in time. Both look and act as if they were ten years younger, but – as Jerome observes – the experiences don’t feel as exciting; instead, they’re predictable and bland. Pastel, if you will. While some of their peers have moved on and started a family, opened their relationships or whatever else, these two just stay put. Roller also doesn’t change much in the tone or style of the film, which remains consistently bright and pretty, thus corroborating the diagnosis she makes concerning the lead characters.

Allegro Pastell is therefore pleasant to watch, but by no means is it a feel-good movie, even though it may be pigeonholed as one. It risks leaving an audience that prefers more drama and psychological depth dissatisfied. Yet the actual heft of the subject hits home after the screening – when the lives of the protagonists can be stripped of their attractive outer wrapping and analysed. Much of the film’s strength lies in the particular chemistry between the two lead actors, who are good together; however, there is no heat between them, so it might be a tad surprising why their characters would end up together. This lack of passion underlines the film’s diagnosis of arrested emotional development. One wonders whether impending world events will wake them up from their emotional coma and add some tangerine or brat green, or whether their lives will stay pastel forever. For now, we can only hope.

Allegro Pastell is a German production staged by Walker + Worm Film GmbH & Co KG and ARD Degeto Film GMBH. Totem Films oversees its international sales.