Valentin Merz

A crew is shooting a libertine costume film in the countryside when Valentin, the director, suddenly disappears. While the local police investigates, the film shoot continues but takes an odd turn. Robin, the cameraman and director’s lover, follows a promise and reaches the Mexican Pacific.

An angry punk in Berlin or a pilgrim in Lourdes, a woman with a disability in the 19th century or a film director wallowing in his self-pity, the film embraces different identities, jumping through centuries and landscapes. Until the adventure takes a new turn and unfolds as a mysterious crime thriller with YouTubers, confined to a castle in France.

As snow falls over a city, people share secret tricks with each other. Like how to kiss somebody and make them disappear, or having thoughts which are unrecognizable to machines.

In 1877, in a watch factory in a valley in north-western Switzerland, Josephine produces balance spindles, tiny parts that ensure the agitation movement ("unrueh") of the mechanical watches. She soon grows uneasy with the organisation of work and possession in the village and its factory and joins the anarchist worker movement of the local watchmakers. There she meets Piotr Kropotkin, a moony Russian traveller. The two of them meet at a time when new technologies such as time measurement, photography and the telegraph are transforming the social order and anarchist discourse is addressing emerging nationalism. During a walk in the woods, Josephine and Piotr ask themselves whether time, money and the government are not all but fictions.

Two barrel organ players roam the streets of Juárez, a district of Mexico City. They play their music and ask passers-by for money, while a couple of tourists from Paris set up an insurance fraud...

After 20 years of separation, brothers Adrian and Valentin spend a week together. 32-year old Adrian lives with their parents and benefits from a disability pension. Valentin, barely older, seems to have found his autonomy. Brothers - A Family Film is a dizzying dive into a relationship as impossible as it is established, where violence and tenderness are one and the same.