Germany, Austria
2026 | 123 min. | Fiction

Jessie is about to leave on vacation with her mom and little sister – but sneaks out to party with her boyfriend Lux. When the pills finally kick in and they climb a high-rise to watch the sunrise, Lux falls asleep – and doesn’t notice Jessie walking towards the edge, eventually falling hundreds of meters. She dies instantly.
A year later, her mother Ella and sister Melli cling to a fragile routine of everyday life – and seem to get by. But when Lux returns into their lives, Ella cannot admit that deep down she blames him for her daughter’s death – and he cannot admit how badly he needs her to forgive him.
We watch everyone trying very hard to do “the right thing” – until the night when Ella finds Lux drunk by the train tracks. He breaks down in Jessie’s old room, begging for forgiveness. But Ella drags him into the forest, asking him to give her some of the stuff he gave Jessie that night. They walk the same path, and Ella sees the same things Jessie must have seen. Driven by a strange impulse, Ella takes Lux and Melli to Tenerife – the holiday that never happened – not realising that nothing awaits them there.
As they prepare to leave, Melli finds Lux’s strange 'candies' in her mother’s backpack. What follows could be dismissed as a drug trip: Jessie seems to be back, as a 3-year-old child. It’s as if Melli had stepped straight into an old MiniDV video of her sister. But this “trip” soon affects everyone: her mother, the entire hotel complex, and even the sun that seems to be frozen in sunset …

Directed by: Sandra Wollner
Written by: Sandra Wollner
Produced by: Viktoria Stolpe, Lixi Frank, David Bohun
Cinematography: Gregory Oke
Editing: Hannes Bruun
Production Design: Julia Libiseller, Gerald Freimuth
Costume Design: Hanna Rode
Make-Up & Hair: Virginie Thomann, Rosa Singhofen
Original Score: David Schweighart
Sound: Dominik Leube, Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer
Visual Effects: Kariem Saleh
Casting: Ulrike Müller, Jacqueline Rietz
Cast: Birgit Minichmayr (Ella), Lotte Shirin Keiling (Melli), Tristan Lopez (Lux), Carla Hüttermann (Jessie), Naomi Elia Richard (Jessie), Esja Wendel (Nina), Elias Esser (Tom), Eva Weißenborn (Eva), Hermann Beyer (Hermann), Knut Berger (Gerry)

Statement of the director:
I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I envy those who do. I do believe that the images of the people we love stay with us – that they somehow inscribe themselves into the world. Ever since my father died, whenever I come across a certain bend in the river, I can see him standing there, fiddling with his fishing rod. And for a brief instant it feels as if I could simply step into that image. I have met the kind of people like those in this film more than once in my life: the mother who lost her daughter, the boy who was there, the younger sister who has not yet found a way to process it. We watch them as they continue with everyday life, because they have no other choice – homework, groceries, dinner – clinging to a fragile routine that barely masks an impossible wish: to somehow return to a place where none of this has happened. But our reality isn’t built to allow that. It’s just not the way the world works.
But then, impossibly, in this film it does happen: you turn the corner and step into an image, and the world folds in on itself, in all its strangeness. The sun finally has the decency to stand still, and for a moment – or forever – everything seems to be fine again. I find there is something intriguing about impossibilities, about really entering them: they reveal something about the nature of human suffering, our longing and our very existence. That’s the way our dreams work; and why waking up can feel so disappointingly dull and offensive.

Production:
The Barricades
https://the-barricades.com/

World Sales:
Charades
https://www.charades.eu/