A poignant story of love, family and sibling connection despite difficult circumstances, Oskar & Lilli. Where No One Knows Us follows two siblings who try to avert their threatening fate with poetic and unusual means.
Six years ago, eight-year-old Oskar (Leopold Pallua) and 13-year-old Lilli (Rosa Zant) fled Chechnya with their mother. Having been living in Austria for six years, the children regard Vienna as their new home and speak fluent German, but are about to be deported along with their mother (Anna Fenderl). When their traumatised mother attempts suicide and is admitted to a psychiatric clinic, it results in the short-term suspension of the deportation – but also in the forced separation of the family, with Oskar and Lilli placed with different foster parents.
The children’s hope that they will be reunited with their mother is nourished by their love for each other and challenges all bureaucratic obstacles with passion and poetry. Based on the 1994 eponymous novel by Monika Helfer, this film is a bittersweet odyssey about the many ways of perceiving the world around you in order to survive.
Tuesday 25th May
102 min
18+
Film Festival
