Aren’t you Happy? (GER 2019, Susanne Heinrich)

GER 2019, D: Susanne Heinrich, A: Marie Rathscheck , 80′, German version, DCP

A melancholic girl is drifting through existence. Looks for night-quarters. Encounters dreamers and guises. Gets involved. Gets undressed. And carries on. As an alien, artistic figure, every-woman. An open game. With the internalised visual memory and expectations of how a girl and woman should be. The projection surface becomes a space of negotiation. Body meets thesis meets thoroughly commercialised self-optimisation. In between performed answers and bored interaction, it flares up, it breaks open under all the make-up, hairstyle and lollipop aesthetics: womanhood, personhood, being allied with someone – in the presence of the individualisation machine.

Susanne Heinrich’s feature film debut is interested in the social and political dimensions of depression. An existential dare in the coat of a feminist manifesto: desire and meeting beyond stereotypes and marketing strategies. Putting oneself at risk is negotiated as long as it gets transformed: from an idealised, romanticised and banalised request to a possibility.

In the presence of Susanne Heinrich

20 April, 8 pm – Schaubühne Lindenfels – € 6,5 (5,5 red.)


Trailer