It's mom's birthday and her three daughters want to throw a big party. But everything turns out differently. It's not just because the divorced dad arrives a few days early and brings his much-too-young new girlfriend with him, or because the birthday girl has to stage the end of the world with her village theater group.

2014 film by Štěpán Altrichter

A biography set in East and West Berlin in which singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner, born in 1947, sings about life in the GDR, her feelings of being uprooted in West Berlin, and looks back with humour and honesty on a life of resistance.

Carla, the runaway with high aims. Lucie, the street girl. Interchanged identities and a shared baby. Collage of a fateful year.

Fashion models are not the usual type of people with whom I can relate, but I found myself strangely moved by the plight of Valerie, as she slowly comes to realise that her previously glamorous lifestyle was not all she thought it was, and the only person who shows her any sympathy is an attendant who works in the underground car park where she spends her lonely nights. Agata Busek gives a strong, touching performance as Valerie, and Devid Striesow is contrastingly low-key as Andre, the car park attendant. The cold of a German Christmas is well conveyed by the direction and photography. What may at first glance seem a slow, slight film is in fact well worth watching, and even repays watching more than once.