EXCLUSIVE: Eva Trobisch, one of Germany’s buzziest rising directors, makes her Berlin competition debut this year with third film Homes Stories and Deadline can unveil a teaser setting up the premise for the film.
When at the audition for a TV talent show, sixteen-year-old Lea is asked, “Who are you and what makes you special?”, she is at a loss what to say and begins to look for a suitable self.
Back home in provincial East Germany, things are complicated. Her parents broke up recently. Her grandparents are constantly bickering, worn down by the pressures of keeping the family hotel afloat. She looks up to her aunt, whose cultural aspirations don’t make her universally popular in her small town.
As the TV appearance approaches, Lea attempts to stitch together a suitable narrative about her life.
After studies at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) in 2009, Trobisch was also a guest student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in New York and completed a master’s degree in screenwriting at the London Film School, where she wrote the screenplay for her feature film debut All Is Well (2018).
The portrait of a woman who represses and conceals a rape struck a chord as the #MeToo movement took off and put Trobisch on the map. The film premiered at the Munich Film Festival, winning the FIPRESCI Prize and the German Cinema New Talent Award, before hitting the international film festival circuit. Her second feature film Ivo (2024) had its world premiere at Berlinale in the Encounters section in 2024.
Trobisch says her new film – shot against the backdrop of the city of city of Greiz in Thuringia – taps into her experiences and connections with East Germany prior to the 1989 fall of the wall, when she was six years old.
“The international title of the film is Home Stories. I was born in East Berlin and then grew up in reunited West Germany. My ‘Home’ has two ‘stories’: the one about the socialist community – one for all and all for one. And the one of individualism, of capitalism – you are something special, and if you just work hard enough, you can do anything,” she says in a director’s statement.
“Both narratives have a strong influence on me. I am working with – and chafing against – both. The family stands for the ideal of community, of roots that you can´t choose but that still condition who you are, and of responsibility to others. The casting show stands for a liberal dream and focuses on the individual. Both narratives are attractive to me, but they also make me want to undermine them.”
Home Stories is produced by Trimafilm in coproduction with Komplizen Film, if… Productions, ZDF and ARTE. Pandora Film is releasing in Germany. The Match Factory is handling international sales.
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