Growing up on the grounds of one of Germany's largest psychiatric hospitals is somehow - different. For Joachim, the director's youngest son, the patients are like family. They are also much nicer to him than his two older brothers, who drive him into fits of rage. His mother, painting watercolors, longs for Italian summer nights instead of constant German rain, while his father secretly, but not discreetly enough, goes his own way. But while Joachim slowly grows up, his world, not only through the loss of his first love, gets more and more cracks...
Acting
Three Joachims feel like one wounded soul aging in real time.
Production
Psychiatric grounds as haunted playground—claustrophobic yet vast.
Writing
Absurdism and ache collide in dinner table conversations.
Director
Sonja Heiss
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Sonja Heiss grew up on actual psychiatric hospital grounds—her father was a clinic director, making this uncomfortably autobiographical.
The 1980s West German setting captures a nation still processing institutional secrets, with psychiatric care as metaphor for unspoken national wounds.
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