Die Ideen

For the first time in the history of the Around the World Festival, we are opening with a film by a former juror: Fabian Stumm! His directing career is one of the loveliest surprises of recent German cinema. After his intimate yet complex relationship dramedies “Knochen und Namen” and “Sad Jokes”, Stumm ventures into something new with “Die Ideen”: in six small stories he tells of people who sense that their lives could look different. A woman invents fake dating profiles and suddenly runs into one of her victims. Two sisters spend a weekend together and promptly fall back into old roles. And former lovers talk again, after decades, about a forbidden relationship, while an actress is confronted with herself at theatre rehearsals.

The ideas Stumm tells of here are sometimes fantasies of escape, sometimes the lies people live by, and occasionally the beginning of something new. The characters try themselves out, reinvent themselves and realise in the process how little they know about themselves. Maren Eggert, Hans Löw and Angela Winkler are part of an ensemble that brings these small designs for living to life with wonderful playfulness. “Die Ideen” is a declaration of love to the human imagination and thus the best conceivable opening for a festival that tries every year to open up new cinematic worlds.