Luna Wedler

In the summer of 2018, novelist Tanja Arnheim and web designer Jerome Daimler have a seemingly ideal long-distance relationship in the heat of Berlin, the idyll of an inherited bungalow in the Hessian Main Valley and many train journeys in between. But the carefully cultivated balance of trust and detachment between the two hyper-reflective millennials is shaken when Tanja realizes on the night of her thirtieth birthday that the relationship could become existential.

On the grounds of a medieval German university town looms an imposing Ginkgo biloba, a tree whose longevity stands in marked contrast to three intimate, human-scaled stories. In 1908, the university’s first female student gains admission into the prestigious botany department, confronting the sexism of both professors and peers. In 1972, amidst counterculture movements, a reserved student finds his attention captured by a fellow housemate and the geranium plant she studies. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a neuroscientist from Hong Kong secures the help of a renowned botanist for an experiment on the old ginkgo tree.

Welcome to the grim world of Hugo Drowak. A misanthrope, boozer, and stinking old good-for-nothing. We invite you on a fanciful journey replete with romance, gloom, and poetry. A story about longing.

Tilda's days are strictly structured: she studies, works at the supermarket checkout and looks after her little sister Ida - on some days she also has to look after her alcoholic mother. But this summer brings a change: Tilda receives a promising job offer for a doctorate in Berlin. Viktor also turns up, who, like her, always swims 22 laps in the swimming pool. When Tilda begins to believe that everything could be better, the situation at home spirals out of control.

One afternoon a polite young boy, Elio, meets his tutor's secret lover. When he confides in her, sharing an even bigger secret, she's convinced he's joking and bursts out laughing.

Cem and his five best friends have been a close-knit community since childhood. For him, they are his true family. But Cem is changing. He becomes more brutal and harder, threatens his friends and terrifies their relatives. After a stay in a psychiatric ward, he does not take the prescribed medication. Threats of violence and aggressive outbursts become more and more frequent. What happens inside him remains incomprehensible to the outside world. Only with Lara is he different. His world is alien to her, which is perhaps the reason why he likes her so much. Cem's friends are torn between their loyalty to their childhood friend and their fear of the ever-increasing danger he poses. At some point, this fear becomes so great that it is unleashed in a brutal act of vigilante justice.

The musically highly gifted maid Elsie, who longs for a career as a musician, is forced into marriage with Jacob, a young stable boy who dreams of owning his own horse. Both have to learn that they can only escape their lack of opportunities if they team up.

Since her little brother Tim drowned in Trieste, Paula has lost the will to live. When she encounters old Helmut, a widower who wants to drive the ashes of his late wife to South Tyrol, she sees a way out – to go to Trieste and take her own life on Tim's birthday. But during the journey, an unexpected friendship develops with Helmut – and her lust for life is reborn.

Hoping to become a great singer in Germany, a young dreamer named Ernst Schrämli finds himself drawn into underhand dealings. Determined to escape a suffocating environment that annihilates any kind of creative or artistic impetus, Ernst sells information about the Swiss army to a Nazi spy by the name of August Schmid, who charms and manipulates him. When Ernst’s crime is uncovered, he is sentenced to death for espionage and treason, becoming the first Swiss citizen to be executed.

When Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch meet for the first time in Paris in the summer of 1958, they are already international celebrities of the literary world. In the four years that follow, they dabble in great love and an open relationship between his hometown of Zurich and her adopted Rome.