After winning Best First Feature at Locarno with All Good [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] in 2018 and the Heiner Carow Prize in the Berlinale’s Encounters with Ivo [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Eva Trobisch et Adrian Cam…
fiche film] in 2024, German writer-director Eva Trobisch arrives in the latter festival’s Competition with Home Stories [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], a complex family mosaic consisting of a multitude of storylines, and peppered with cultural and psychological details that hint at possible interpretations but do not seem to fully translate for international viewers.

The focus shifts from one family member to another, but the narrative is framed between 16-year-old Lea’s (luminous first-timer Frida Hornemann) audition for and participation in a talent show. She lives in the small, old town of Greiz in Thuringia, in deep East Germany, with her mother, Rieke (Gina Henkel), and her new lover, who is also the father of a new child on the way and her school’s headmaster – but she resents her mum and wants to move in with her father, Matze (Max Reimelt, a standout in the generally strong cast), in the large hotel with stables owned by his parents, Christel (Rahel Ohm) and Friedrich (Peter René Lüdicke).

The whole family gathers to celebrate Lea’s success on the lawn of the aforementioned place, which hasn’t seen any refurbishment or welcomed many guests in a long time. We meet Matze’s sister Kati (Eva Löbau), head of the local museum and a role model for the girl, who is about to spend a large amount of public money – significantly, coming from the government based in the west – on its renovation, a source of bitter and insidiously expressed frustration for Christel, who believes the funds would be better used to support small businesses such as hers. Lea’s slightly older cousin Edgar (Florian Geisselmann), meanwhile, protests that the hotel will host a right-wing political convention.

The political and the personal intertwine through many branches of the story – specifically, the differences in the positions and perceptions of men and women in the East German context. But however deftly DoP Adrian Campean and editor Laura Lauzemis follow the alternating narrative branches of Trobisch’s complicated screenplay, many psychological and cultural nuances will be lost on international audiences.

What will not be lost are the more general lines of resentment and passive aggression within the family, the sources of which must stem back decades, or even back to societal shifts since the times of Christel’s parents and grandparents. Some of these surface, but many are held back and pent up, and it’s only Metze that will at times directly display anger, but also gentleness and loyalty. A subtle emotional highlight of the film is the encounter between him and his wife’s new lover in the maternity ward.

Lea remains the emotional anchor for the potentially puzzled viewer and is the one who, at least for a moment, reunites the family in some sort of fraught togetherness. Her performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” is imperfect, gentle and raw, and could be an element that transcends the cultural barriers – but it can’t complete the whole picture. 

Home Stories was produced by Munich-based Trimafilm, in co-production with German companies if…Productions, Komplizen Film and ZDF/ARTE, while The Match Factory has the international rights.