While Sasha's mother is dreaming of her son's great career as a pianist, Sasha is left speechless for other reasons: his beloved piano teacher Mr. Weber tells him, he is leaving town forever. Sasha is heartbroken, and the only person in whom he can confide his feelings, is his best friend, Jiao. As a son of an Ex-Yugoslav family even in Germany one rarely lives outside the closet, and Sasha is grateful that his homophobic father believes Jiao is his girlfriend. But what begins as a useful lie becomes a large and complicated one, when Sasha's younger brother, begins an affair with Jiao. All lies get exposed and what appears to be a catastrophe is in fact the revelation of new possibilities in the lives of Sasha's family.
Acting
Saša Kekez captures that specific agony of wanting someone who doesn't know you exist.
Writing
The fake-girlfriend trope gets a genuinely fresh twist with the brother-Jiao affair.
Director
Dennis Todorović
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
One of the few German films centering queer Balkan diaspora experience, released years before similar stories gained mainstream traction.
Director Dennis Todorović drew from his own Montenegrin-German background; the fake-girlfriend scenario was loosely autobiographical.
DE
