Much like Marc Rothemund’s Weekend Rebels [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film], which played last year at the Zagreb Film Festival, in the KinoKino sidebar dedicated to younger audiences, Sarah Winkenstette’s Greetings from Mars [+leggi anche:
intervista: Sarah Winkenstette
scheda film], which is being shown in that same sidebar this year, takes its core subject of autism quite seriously. It is not used as a gimmick to propel comedy or drama around the young protagonist, but it is an integral part of his personality. Judging by its festival track record so far – a prolonged tour sprinkled with a handful of awards – the approach has paid off.

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Our ten-year-old hero named Tom (Theo Kretschmer) is growing up with two siblings in a single-parent household. Since their father passed away recently, the mother, Vera (Eva Löbau, recently glimpsed in The Teachers’ Lounge [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: İlker Çatak
intervista: Leonie Benesch
scheda film]), has little choice but to agree to a four-week business trip to China. For Tom, his daredevil brother Elmar (Anton Noltensmeter) and their teenage sister Nina (Lilli Lacher, glimpsed in last year’s Berlinale title Ivo [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Eva Trobisch, Adrian Campean
scheda film]), it means that they will have to spend that part of the summer holidays with their paternal grandparents, Horst (Michael Wittenborn, a character actor seen in Toni Erdmann [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
Q&A: Maren Ade
scheda film] and All Quiet on the Western Front [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Edward Berger
scheda film]) and Hanna (Hedi Kriegeskotte, mostly active on television), who are still coming to terms with their son’s passing.

Tom is interested in space exploration, and his dream is to become an astronaut and visit Mars. He can flood anyone who’ll listen with a ton of facts off the top of his head, on this and other topics, but he has a hard time managing everyday challenges, like seeing the colour red, hearing loud noises and enduring unwanted physical contact from anyone other than his mother. Tom sees staying with his hippie-like grandparents in their house with a red front door and no rules as a training mission for his future career as a space explorer. He has even found some ideal mission-related roles for his siblings, while the mystery surrounding the disappearance of an asteroid keeps his mind occupied. As is usually the case, adventures and new challenges will ensue…

Although it is pretty clear from the get-go that Tom is different from his (neuro-)typical siblings, the diagnosis is not uttered until the third-act climactic scene. That decision shows a certain seriousness and respect for the topic that Sebastian Grusnick and Thomas Möller dealt with in their book, which Winkenstette tries to adapt for the screen. Theo Kretschmer’s lived-in, but also measured, acting helps the cause as well, while the rest of the cast have no trouble striking up their own chemistry with the young lead and with each other.

However, some of the solutions that Winkenstette opts for are quite run-of-the-mill, such as Jakob Berger’s hand-held camerawork, while the on-the-nose score by André Feldhouse gets overbearing in its attempts to constantly spell out the desired emotional tone. But the film is actually saved by Nicole Kortlüke’s editing: not just because the animated material is deftly blended with the live-action shots, but also thanks to the roughness of the montage sequences when Tom gets agitated: in this way, the movie presents what is happening in his head in a compelling fashion.

In the end, Greetings from Mars accomplishes its mission of exploring and presenting “foreign inner universes” to neurotypical audiences with great empathy and warmth. Both children and their parents could learn a thing or two from Sarah Winkenstette’s film.

Greetings from Mars is a German production by Leitwolf Filmproduktion and Kinescope Film.