Everytime‘s close-knit screenplay tightens its hold on grief and survival, presenting a modern, distinctive coping mechanism helmed by contemporary director Sandra Wollner.
Jessie (Carla Hüttermann) and Lux (Tristan López) rest on the rooftop, wrapped in laughter, swimming through memories – everything beautiful, everything absurd, everything that is uniquely, quietly theirs. Jessie’s gaze drifts across the silent floors below. “Where are they all?” she whispers. “Is no one awake yet?” The building answers in empty hallways, a skeleton of concrete and glass, breathing without a heartbeat. Jessie’s gaze drifts once more – and catches a flicker in the sky. She watches it, breathless, admiring its velocity – and without warning, a body leaps off the building and falls straight down. But everything else stays the same. The building remains still. The trees keep their secrets. The wind still hums. The air still breathes. The sun still burns. And then, an ambulance arrives.
Of course the 2026 Prix Un Certain Regard winner found its way to Karlovy Vary‘s Horizons – it was never in doubt. Director Sandra Wollner’s contribution to this year’s cinema opens with a family shattered. But this is no ordinary death. It doesn’t knock and it doesn’t whisper. It arrives unannounced – a suicide. Ella (Birgit Minichmayr), the mother, now lives with her youngest daughter Melli (Lotte Keiling), and they are pretty much going through life after Jessie’s demise. While they try to cope with the reasons behind it, they witness that Jessie’s ex-boyfriend, Lux, is in town, and he visits them. One unexpected day, the mother suddenly plans a trip to Tenerife, a trip that should have happened while Jessie was alive. She decides to go on the trip with Melli and Lux without warning. And with the trip comes a heavy burden, a heavy thought, and many transformational occurrences.
If you have witnessed the film The Trouble with Being Born, you’d believe that Wollner’s craft is never conventional. Her unusualness is not a style – it’s an experience. It seeps into you, settles deep, and reflects the unseen with startling clarity. When she brings it to the screen, everything becomes vivid, undeniable, and profoundly clear. The film presents three female figures across distinct generational lenses: the mother, the teenage daughter, and the youngest daughter. Ella sees the world as something to be conquered through hard work, while Jessie predictably sees it through the rose-coloured glasses of love, and Melli just wants to poke at everything with wonder. It’s a clean generational divide – maybe a little too clean – but it works. Between sisters, between mother and daughters, fault lines run deep. Yet love still threads through the cracks, testing each of them in its own way. And then there is Lux, a ghost of a lost love, reminding us that loss arrives not always with warning, but always with weight.
The screenplay weaves past and future together until they become inseparable, and in that space, we as viewers start to understand a kind of grief that’s rarely spoken aloud. Every character takes the death and makes it their own, carrying it around and dropping pieces of it onto everyone they meet. It’s heavy, repetitive, and perhaps that’s exactly the point. When a presence departs, Wollner suggests that we become attuned to the overlooked moments, the urge for comprehension, and the persistence of survival. Wollner strips away the expected cries, the loud grief. Instead, she turns inward – to the unexposed, the unspoken, the things that cling to us long after silence settles.
The film’s distinction lies in its contemporary examination of humanity, wherein coping strategies are mediated through technology – digital games such as Minecraft, unmanned aerial devices, and telephonic communication. This reflects a current cultural tendency to evade the difficulties of lived reality by immersing oneself in virtual spaces – a dreamlike phenomenon masked as technological engagement. Each character shoulders the blame, enclosing themselves in a self-imposed containment meant to alleviate suffering.
Within this ensemble, we observe interpersonal awkwardness, ideological disagreement, and affective despair – a representation of contemporary realism wherein mourning is not performed publicly, but rather shown in private, sequestered spaces. The characters in these spaces tend to ask themselves: how long can we hide? What binds us to each other? And when will memory flood back? These questions echo when solidarity finally arrives, when silence fills the room. And Wollner shows us what we always suspected: silence is never empty, but it screams loudly. Lotte Keiling as Melli deserves considerable recognition for her representation of the adolescent experience of bereavement. Her portrayal effectively captures that closeness is manifested not through overt affection, but through interpersonal fractures and the quiet yearning for the deceased’s presence.
There comes a moment when we are moved to ask: how could a person simply depart? – unless such a departure is only conceivable within a surrealist framework, a state in which one may finally be perceived and acknowledged, and emotional tension may subside. Everytime unfolds like a quiet revelation – never rushing, never explaining. It hands you pieces, one by one, until a portrait of grief emerges. It offers a world where burdens are not erased but transformed and dissolved in beauty, while dimensions bend and grief finds its shapely antidote seamlessly.
The 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival runs from July 3 to 11, 2026.
