The sound is set quickly: Schlager-Chanteruse Bianca Graf sings in “The most beautiful roses blossom in Sangerhausen” the Saxony-Anhalt small town near Thuringia. The abrupt action makes the hit kitsch collide directly on mouse gray reality. Nevertheless, “self-criticism of a bourgeois dog” director Julian Radlmaier did not roll up in the real sense. Problems such as unemployment and, above all, racism spill out again and again in the form of radio voices or malignant remarks by residents in the plot, but it is said above all about which miracles can happen almost utopian …
… if you only approach each other and talk to each other: In the course of “Longing in Sangerhausen”, who has celebrated his world premiere in the competition of the film festival in Locarno, a group of outsiders-namely an East German low-wage worker with broken heart, an Iranian Travel Influeni with broken arm and a Korean with a frenzy plus cheeky-son. In the end, you are really reluctant to say goodbye to this wild bunch – even though Radlmeier's film seems overwhelmed and initially only difficult to get out.
In the air-conditioned coach of Sung-Nam (Kyung-Taek Lie), the protagonists find together in a confined space.
It is told – divided into four chapters – by Ursula (Clara Schwinning), who cleans in a furniture store in the morning and then often serves very uncomfortable tourists in a café; von Neda (Maral Keshavarz), an Iranian asylum seeer who tries to get through as a Travel Influeni with a topic of cheap travel destinations in Germany. And then there is a third figure that is strangely embezzled in the official summary of Locarno, even though it takes up a lot of space:
Sung-Nam (Kyung-Taek Lie) is an older, Korean-born man who once fled from the Soviet Union because he did not want to go to the Afghanistan war and now offers travel tours in his air-conditioned minibus. He illegally lives a small, sweet cheeky boy named Buk-the grandson of the woman he once wanted to marry. In any case, thanks to Sung-Nam's coach, the paths of the four that grow together from “Longing in Sangerhausen” into a kind of replacement family over the 90 minutes of “Longing in Sangerhausen” …
Bloated action
“Longing in Sangerhausen” not only tells of these four figures, but also devotes itself to the East German past. A short episode at the very beginning revolves around the housemaid Lotte (Paula Schindler), which in the 19th century has to dispose of the excrement of the poet Novalis, born near Sangerhausen and – just like her colleague Ursula many decades later – dreams of another life.
The relationship between the past and the present is taken up again and again-not only in terms of content, but also by smaller mystery intensity and recurring symbols such as a blue stone. However, all of this remains vague and ultimately does not make anything essential to the story, but rather ensures that Radlmaier's film feels unnecessarily bloated and is also more difficult than already.
With Henriette Confurius (“The Girl and The Spider”), one of the currently hottest German actresses is also involved in “Longing in Sangerhausen”.
Unfortunately, even after the Novalis episode, the whole thing does not develop a right train, but first tells how Ursula (Henriette Confurius), whose band is a guest in town, ties tender gang before the musician suddenly tackles without any further news. A not completely uninteresting, but at least somewhat extensive episode, which primarily serves to form the already clear-desolate emotional life of the young woman and her longing for outbreak.
When Neda comes on the plan and meets Sung-Nam and Ursula, the film is gradually finding and becoming more and more-without tones of the more serious way to completely push aside-to a dry-humorous comedy with whose protagonist you would have liked to have spent a little more time. But as soon as that finds this together, “longing in Sangerhausen” is gradually approaching its end.
Conclusion: Well-played mix of social drama and comedy with a certain mystery impact, the 16mm images that have been with impressive, as if it has come from time, which gives the whole thing to the whole thing between nostalgia and melancholy oscillating. Julian Radlmaier (“Blood Sucker”) wants too much in terms of content and does not find a right rhythm, a clearer focus on the four wonderful main characters would have been desirable.
We saw “Longing in Sangerhausen” as part of the Locarno Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere as part of the official competition.