Longing

German director Valeska Grisebach takes her time. Since her 2001 debut Be My Star, she has made three films, including the recent NYFF55 selection Western, all of which star non-actors and involve extensive preparatory interviews with people from the regions in which she shoots. To write Longing, her wrenching portrait of love and betrayal in a small German town, she asked a number of couples from Berlin-Brandenburg about their personal lives. Out of their responses she crafted a rich story about a metalworker and firefighter who puts his blissful marriage to his childhood sweetheart in jeopardy when he finds himself falling—against all expectations—into an affair with a waitress in the town next door. Luminous, plainspoken, and utterly unpretentious, Longing is one of contemporary cinema’s great domestic tragedies.