Everytime

Austrian director Sandra Wollner’s atmospheric, constantly surprising new film is a work of cinematic revelation and a mesmerizing, highly unexpected passage into a state of suspended grief. After unsettling viewers with her startling, sci-fi-tinged breakthrough The Trouble with Being Born (New Directors/New Films 2020), Wollner here immerses the viewer in a different sort of reality bending: after a shocking accident befalls a teenage girl (Carla Hüttermann) in Berlin, her mother, Ella (Birgit Minichmayr), younger sister (Lotte Shirin Keiling), and boyfriend (Tristan López) drift into a state of suspended grief somewhere between nightmare and reverie. With its extended, audacious climax set on the sun-dappled Spanish island of Tenerife, where Ella takes her fellow grieving survivors on the family vacation that never was, the film moves into an eerie, perhaps redemptive realm of perception. Featuring astonishing, sense-heightening cinematography by Gregory Oke (DP of Aftersun, NYFF60), Everytime won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A 1-2 Special release.