German Film Fund

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

Perhaps they should never have met, but fate wanted otherwise. Monika and Joseph. She is a curator, he is an immigrant from Congo, a businessman with an unclear past and present. They meet during a police raid at a bar, when the first of many sparks flies between them. An understated love story, a melodrama without pathos, a fragile story about the ambiguous nature of love and the impossibility of overcoming it through reason.