NZIFF: What Marielle Knows (1)

Panic around a new digital Big Brother era underpins a clever, absurdist send-up of bourgeois hypocrisy, as a married couple are put on the spot by their daughter’s all-pervasive telepathy.

Germany has a thorny history with mass intelligence gathering, and a continued vigilance around data privacy – and anxiety. Director Frédéric Hambalek taps into it with satirical, ribald flair and a twist of the fantastical in a sharp domestic parable for a new era of global surveillance paranoia.

Julia (Julia Jentsch) is precariously close to a full-blown affair with the workmate she flirts with on smoking breaks. Her husband Tobias (Felix Kramer) dreams of getting even with a publishing house colleague who undercuts his authority in editorial design meetings. When their teenager Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) is slapped by a school friend over an insult, the impact leaves her with the sudden telepathic ability to see everything her parents do throughout the day — a development that spells disaster for the household, as dishonesty can no longer sustain the veneer of stable marital contentment.

As the family descends into a desperate, riotous war of manipulation, they must experiment with new moral codes. Is radical honesty and defiance the best course of action, or should they stifle egos and instincts in line with their preferred image? Better yet, can Marielle’s new powers be curbed? — Carmen Gray

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