Something is happening in the German cinema – at least in the one that has no money and just hinders with friends and themselves. Because while the film funding system has actually been constantly stuck in permanent satisfaction and reform debates for decades, the permanent rebel Dominik Graf from the Referring Generation has long since been on the streets – but also in the existing system. Without funding, no budget and in guerrilla style. After all, it has never been easier and cheaper than today, thanks to smartphone cameras and freeware post production tools.
More and more young directors, it seems, are actually following this call – or at least the films are becoming more and more visible to those who shoot outside of film funding. In any case, the now-schon-Kiezkinkinklassiker “Heiko's World” has so sustainably enthusiastic that director Dominik Galizia then opened the doors to the higher budgets in the next step-which it then invested in the much more complex but unfortunately less successful fairground film “Rock'n'roll Ringo”.
Voluntary (?!?) Without a budget
The Hamburg Timo Jacobs-who once started as a amateur actor at the great German cinema trial Klaus Lemke-recently presented his fourth no budget indie comedy with the charming slacker film “Hochstapler & Ponys”. And with Dietrich Brüggemann (“Kreuzweg”, “Lower Austria”), an established director is now deliberately taking one step back after five films (and three “crime scenes”, a fourth in December) – and turns back with “Home Entertainment“For the first time in 20 years, a film without a budget. With friends, including not a few well -known faces – concentrated in almost a single scene: namely a large, beige and actually fairly comfortable -looking sofa.
A large part of “Home Entertainment” takes place on Florian's couch (Joseph Bundschuh) and Marie (Nadine Dubois).
Brüggemann already reveals the main topic of “Home Entertainment” in the first scene – one of the few that does not take place on the sofa said: in that we encounter Florian (Joseph Bundschuh) in the car while waiting for his friend Marie (Nadine Dubois). It is in the supermarket and buys for dinner with friends, but due to (only) suspected food intolerance, the original plan is quickly thrown over the pile. The agreement by cell phone fails on the unstable network – and Florian is not very enthusiastic about the announcement, but then deletes its increasingly fewer and fewer critical voicemails before sending. (Actually, does anyone really listen to their own voice messages before sending? A cultural technology that can be learned in “Home Entertainment”!)
In the end there is only a resigned “yes, okay”, but Marie is already sitting in the passenger seat again, with the purchases for the unpopular beetroot salad in his pocket. The food then fails anyway, the invited friends cancel at short notice, and you decide that you could also make a cozy evening in pairs: order food (“4.2 stars, that's a thing”) instead of cooking yourself, and watching a film on the sofa. And then the actual plot from “Home Entertainment” gets going. Or rather: to stand it, because in principle it is about the impossibility of just watching a film comfortably at home.
Difficult decisions – or just the epitome of First World Problems?
Because first of all, of course, the decision for a film must be made. You click through various streaming services and come across all sorts that we would only like to see itself. Resolute Serbian pub operators, silent German fathers, or would you prefer “life is a croissant”? On the documentary channel, the climate activists like the sea rescue are placed on the watchlist-but then you prefer not this evening. And the sweet animal babies that Marie would like to see are unfortunately all threatened with extinction.
At some point you decide on a film-just to be confronted with the countless pitfalls that all the occasional streams know all too well: logged out, forgotten, password forgotten, keeping old cell phone number. And then, when you finally manage to start the film, it only runs in German dubbing. Not to speak of the hooked internet. “Home Entertainment” is a comedy of interruptions and delays – even the food delivery can be followed live by app on the wrong path from Charlottenburg to Tempelhof. Brüggemann opens up a lot of space for growing tensions as well as for the most pressure and increasingly annoying but noble-speaking out of all kinds of unspoken.
The neighbor (Anna Brüggemann) also stops by from time to time – and flirts a little too obviously with Florian for Marie's taste.
However, the two -person play then increasingly breaks up in the course of the film when a neighbor, friend and at some point even the police are just around the corner and keep creating new situations. Not all of these episodes work equally well, but overall this structure keeps the pace high and ensures that “Home Entertainment” remains the limited setting despite varied. Brüggemann uses the pleasantly compact term of 85 minutes for an all-round of the collective love life of contemporary something-mit-culture pairs, including platonic free self-confirmation by secret tinder profile. (Or was it bumble?)
Conclusion: Anyone who has always wanted to know what dangers it has to only contest his film consumption by streaming can certainly learn a lot in the new film by Dietrich Brüggemann, made as a no-budget production beyond the German film funding system. In addition to network problems and the eternal compulsion to continue clicking, dating apps, delivery services and dutifully conceived mercise from climate activism to sustainable parenthood to the target for Brüggemann's ridicule-everything is stuffed into a digital relationship comedy that is gratifying with 85 minutes.
We saw “Home Entertainment” at the Munich Film Festival in 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere.