Container

Two women work shifts at a dairy in Brandenburg. At work and in the village Tava and Maryna are known merely as 'the two Polish women'. They ignore each other. One day when the manager is away, one of the women, Tava, can't be found. At night in her living container Maryna has a disturbing encounter. She wakes up and realises that Tava is lying in bed next to her, clasping her in a strange way. During the next shift Maryna doesn't say a word about her countrywoman's reappearance. A little later, Tava disappears completely after a drinking session somewhere nearby. There's something distinctly eerie about this film. The story is narrated by Maryna's voice-over which shares with us what she knows – or rather, what she manages to piece together. Because isn't every story merely the attempt to make sense of a series of disparate fragments of reality? And don't we all just pretend to know what we're talking about when we talk about others? This is precisely the blank space around which director Sebastian Lang draws his narrative circle with the certainty of a sleepwalker. (Berlinale)