Nikola is a son, husband and grandson who teams up with his wife Corina to make a film about this. At its centre is his mother Dida who, due to a learning disability, has always been dependent on Nikola’s grandmother and lives with her in a small two-room flat. So far, so good. But Granny is getting old and Dida longs for independence. So it’s up to Nikola, who suddenly finds himself in charge. A charming look at a family in transition.

It’s a constant back and forth, as the couple live in Switzerland while mother Dida and Granny Dobrila live in Belgrade. No sooner have Corina and Nikola stepped out of the bus in one place when they find themselves on the return journey. Or is it the outward journey? Grandmother and daughter are a functional-dysfunctional team – one of them the brain, the other the executing body. The fact that Dida is much more than a shadow of her carer becomes apparent when Dobrila increasingly withdraws into an observer’s position. How can the grandson take over his grandmother’s duties without trading his own independence for that of his mother? The two directors succeed in making a touching film about the inescapable changes in their family without slipping into heaviness, working with lots of humour and a camera that seems to be present under any circumstances.

Small and cu… no, not cute. This knee-high creature seems somewhat affectionate and shy instead. Until it comes snarling around the corner, sprinting after you on short legs through the empty suburb. An uneasy lurking, a lurking unease starts to spread. With hand-drawn austerity, mean sounds and not-so-friendly characters, Malte Stein prepares the surgical instruments for some terrific mental cinema – for the protagonist and for all who watch him.

A real-life tropical holiday resort becomes a stage where staff and guests play their roles in tableaux vivants. They hide their faces behind carved emoji masks that serve – in the digital world – to express emotions and rate things. The result is a superficial and at the same time subversive semi-reality of linguistic, social and cultural levels of (mis-)communication.