52 Films by Women Vol 10. 37. HOME STORIES (Etwas ganz Besonderes) (Director: Eva Trobisch)

 

Pictured: Bonny (Ida Fischer, left) and Lea (Frida Hornemann, right) perform on the eve of a recording of a television talent contest. A scene from German writer-director Eva Trobisch's third feature, 'Home Stories' ('Etwas ganz Besonderes'). Still courtesy of Pandora Film Verleih (Germany).

For her third feature, Etwas ganz Besonderes (English title: Home Stories) German writer-director Eva Trobisch focuses on a fractured family gathered to support sixteen-year-old Lea (Frida Hornemann) who has been selected to progress in an ‘X Factor’ style television music talent contest. The English title refers to the segment of the show that illustrates the contestant’s background, intended to make them relatable. These shows aren’t just about the voice. They intend to hook the audience with the competitor’s journey.

But Trobisch doesn’t remake Little Miss Sunshine for the German market. Her film is emphatically not a comedy. Rather it explores unspoken tensions that rumble below the surface. In going solo, Lea alienates her musical partner, Bonny (Ida Fischer) who accompanies her to a television recording in Munich, during which competitors elicit support from the judges and then choose a mentor. Lea’s parents are divorced. There are also disagreements between other family members. Trobisch is less interested in making the audience want Lea to succeed than to ask questions about culture’s role in helping to navigate differences of opinion.

We might consider Trobisch’s avatar to be the heavily pregnant Rieke (Gina Henkel), Lea’s mother.  Rieke, Henri (Yvon Sable Moltzen), Lea’s mop-haired younger brother explains, doesn’t believe in endeavours that privilege the individual, like the talent show that Lea has entered, rather those that benefit the collective. Understandably, Lea doesn’t want to live with her mother any more, choosing instead to stay with her self-employed father, Matze (Max Riemelt), who resides with his parents in a country hotel that doubles as a stable; the business has been in the family for decades. Matze is introduced visiting Rieke’s apartment to collect some tax documents. He leaves with a large lamp in his hand, which he claims Rieke said he could take. Rieke, who has just had a new washing machine delivered, uses the word ‘steal’ to describe Matze’s action. We see Matze install the lamp in one of the hotel rooms and switch it on, a metaphor for his unexpectedly empty life; while the light works, there’s not much to shine it on. Lea is introduced giving a performance with Bonny, though the evening ends with her cousin, Edgar (Florian Geißelmann) having beer thrown over him after a disagreement over [right-wing] politics. Interestingly, Trobisch doesn’t show the individual throwing the beer. She does not invite us to take sides in the argument. Edgar’s family is also broken. His mother, Kati (Eva Löbau) raises him alone while engaged in a renovation project, restoring a museum, a project designed to attract visitors to the region.

The hotel and stables run by Lea’s paternal grandparents, Friedrich (Peter René Lüdicke) and Christel (Rahel Ohm) is in significant need of support. An early scene shows a group of four workers, two of them wearing blue plastic gloves, the others not, pushing a horse against a wall and forcing it to lie down. The horse is next shown receiving an MRI scan. Christel has agreed to host a conference given by a far-right group, which incenses Edgar. Later, the grandparents discover that someone has sabotaged the catering, putting ‘animals’ (insects?) under cloths that cover cakes. The clients demand compensation. Edgar, not named as the perpetrator, is nowhere to be seen. This scene is another illustration of Trobisch’s approach: to focus on results not actions. We rarely share an emotion expressed on screen. We empathise with sentiments after the fact.

Lea finds it difficult to describe herself, reluctant to identify herself as a person formed by a particular experience. We ask ourselves why this might be; Trobisch is very good at throwing questions back at the audience. We might conclude that a series of experiences does not necessarily result, at a certain point, in the forming of a personality. A person may continue to be a ‘work in progress’ long after their adolescence. There is also the question of whether declaring oneself is a form of taking sides, aligning oneself with one family member (a father, mother or aunt) over another. Lea appears to understand that she is participating in a show that takes a snapshot of her development to date for the sake of an ongoing story. Some people are happy to allow themselves to be summarised. Lea holds something back.

Lea’s grandmother, Christel has no such compunction in defining herself. ‘I have great kids and grandkids,’ she smiles. Significantly, she does not mention her husband or their business, another of the unspoken tensions. In a television programme, Kati is shown in a friend’s house, with its voluminous bookshelves, rather than allowing herself to be shown in her own apartment. ‘It would be too close to home,’ she explains. Lea watches the edited news segment in which Kati explains her project. She wants her ‘home story’ to feature Kati’s museum, where she interned the previous summer. ‘But it is complete,’ Kati explains to Matze. ‘Could she be shown filling a shelf?’ Matze asks.

The impact of display is Trobisch’s core theme. She opens the film with footage of a peacock, spreading its blue feathers. Rieke’s pregnancy is heavily on display. At one point, Matze and Rieke are both topless. Matze amuses himself by pushing his belly against Rieke’s pregnant bump by means of ‘compare and contrast’; Rieke still creates life, while Matze can only get fat. We infer that Rieke has been unfaithful to her new partner, Arthur (Florian Lukas) but this isn’t mentioned. It is as if break-up sex has taken place after a new relationship has formed. Trobisch suggests that relationship boundaries are malleable.

Pictured: Rieke (Gina Henkel, left) and Matze (Max Riemelt, right) in a scene from German writer-director Eva Trobisch's third feature, 'Home Stories' ('Etwas ganz Besonderes'). Still courtesy of Pandora Film Verleih (Germany).

Arthur mentions that Lea can be allowed to miss two weeks of lessons. I wondered whether he was her teacher; this would explain how he and Rieke met. Matze expresses his anger with his ex-wife by throwing a glass against the wall. This is before the ‘topless’ scene.

‘If I progress, I’m going to get my ears pierced,’ Lea tells Bonny, who becomes progressively estranged from her best friend. Lea shares a video of her ear piercing with Kati, who is disturbed by it and shows it to Matze. Late in the drama, we are told (not by Lea) that Lea became pregnant herself and arranged an abortion. The troubled [teen] father committed suicide. ‘This can’t be true,’ one character declares. Trobisch doesn’t show any family member confronting Lea with this story. It hangs over the action. However, Lea’s choice of song, ‘Fix You’ (by Coldplay), performed by her during the competition, appears to have an extra meaning.

Another action that lingers in the background is the lawsuit that a neighbour lodged against Lea’s grandparents, blaming them for a fungus that affected his land. In a chance encounter in the woodland, the neighbour asks whether his daughter’s horse could be stabled with them. If so, how much would it cost. ‘800 Euro,’ suggests Christel. ‘You can ask for more,’ says the neighbour. ‘All right, 1000 Euro.’ A deal is struck. ‘I could have asked for more,’ Christel boasts later. Money worries remain.  These erupt when Christel attends the opening of the museum. She approaches various officials and asks, to Kati’s annoyance, ‘how much did it cost?’ She is told the project was financed through various funds. There was no single grant. This makes her increasingly agitated, implying that the project is a waste.

While Trobisch doesn’t show tensions being resolved, she brings various plot strands to a conclusion. The horse stabled with Lea’s grandparents becomes ill. Rieke gives birth, accompanied by Matze, who is mistaken for the father. We find out whether Lea progresses in the show. Christel disappears and puts the 31-room hotel on the market (for 270,000 Euro). In the film’s final sequence, Trobisch shows us Lea’s ‘home story’, life with her grandparents. ‘If I don’t become a singer, I could work here,’ she says of the hotel. Her ambition is already past its use-by date, bearing no relation to reality.

In making a film about the difficulty in resolving family differences, and tensions in the country more widely, Trobisch doesn’t provide any answers. Rather, she invites suspicion of the ‘ready answers’ perpetuated in the media. Among the recurring musical motifs is a song, ‘we weave’, which is performed at the property restored by Kati. The creation of a narrative is depicted as machine-like, an unstoppable process. Trobisch wants to switch the machine off in mid-production to ask, ‘what is being woven here?’ Home Stories asks a lot of its audience but assumes (optimistically) that they are willing to engage.

Reviewed at Brussels International Film Festival, UGC De Brouckère, Screen Six, Sunday 6^th September 2026, 18:00 screening (also Tuesday 8^th September 2006, same venue, 14:15 screening)