It’s not uncommon for a film to have a moving love story at its core. Yet this particular set-up is unusual. The lovers here are Ingebo rg Bachmann and Paul Celan, both important representatives of post-war German-language poetry. The story of the relationship between the Austrian and the Jew from Czernowitz is told through their nearly 20-year correspondence (1948–1967). Or, more precisely, by a young woman and a young man reading from their letters in a studio in Vienna’s venerable Funkhaus. You hear longing, accusations, doubts, expressions of intimacy and alienation, news of separations and lengthy silences. You sense their struggle for words. What these words trigger can be seen in the faces of those reading them out. It’s not only the text but also its effects that are being performed and occasionally discussed. The intensity of the relationship drama is generated via the fascinating language, the actors’ presence, and the camerawork and editing, which break up the dialogue via changing perspectives and shot sizes. Chats during cigarette breaks, in the stairwell and the canteen, lead into the present. History, which was stronger than love, never slips out of focus. (berlinale 2016) ***** In 1948 Paul Celan, a concentration camp survivor and esteemed post-war poet, met Ingeborg Bachmann, a fellow writer whose father was a Nazi. By 1971, Celan had committed suicide, before which the erstwhile lovers met on just one more occasion. However, they had amassed almost twenty years of long-distance correspondence. Inspired by fact and fiction, where document and literature intersect in the letters, Ruth Beckermann and writing partner Ina Hartwig (a literary agent) embarked on a screenplay based on the exchanges. The result is a cross between observational documentary and essay film, with a deceptively simple approach: two actors (Plaschg and Rupp) read the letters in a recording studio. Applying a documentarian’s intuition to this setup, Beckermann keeps her camera rolling between readings and into cigarette breaks. Capturing Plaschg and Rupp’s palpable on-screen chemistry, Beckermann succeeds in evoking a contemporary ambulatory romance from the historical source material. (Jemma Desai)