The Strange Lit­tle Cat

Siblings Karin and Simon are visiting their parents and their little sister Clara. That evening, other relatives will be joining them for dinner. This sequence of family scenes in a Berlin flat creates a wondrous world of the everyday: Coming and going, conversations, all manner of doings, each movement leading to the next, one word following another. It is a carefully staged chain reaction of actions and sentences. And in between, silent gazes and anecdotes about experiences. Putting the absurdities of daily life on display, the film assembles seemingly unspectacular details and snippets into an exciting choreography of everyday life. "The Strange Little Cat" plays out for the most part in the enclosed area of a family apartment. In this model space, I want to create a condensed universe in which the "thrownness" of an absurd existence glimmers from behind everyday actions and conversations; in which the diffculty of communicating experiences and feelings continually renews the characters’ isolation from one another. The characters are repeatedly compelled to act, simply in order to fll the emptiness of their surroundings. Fleeting moments of mutual understanding, recognition and deep intimacy ficker and reoccur throughout. In these moments, the apartment's pulsing emptiness is stilled, and the scream of the space’s silence recedes. This cycle continues until the mundane choreography of everyday life comes to a halt, and the day comes to an end.