Sandra is a single mum in Paris. She has to find a suitable and affordable home for her blind and increasingly demented father. And the man she falls in love with is a married father. Enough drama for three tragedies. Writer and director Mia Hansen-Løve hasn't made a comedy out of it, but a surprisingly light, sometimes thought-provoking film that has a lot of clever things to say about love, life and death. All of this with a charmingly unpretentious Léa Seydoux ("James Bond 007: No Time to Die". 2021) at the centre.

Mia Hansen-Løve

Mia Hansen-Løve's Danish grandfather is responsible for her surname. She herself was born in Paris in 1981 and was discovered there in 1998 by director Olivier Assayas as an actress for his film "Ende August, Anfang September". She studied acting, wrote film reviews and made her feature film debut as a director in 2007 with "Tout est pardonné". She went on to make six more feature films, for which she always wrote the screenplay herself, including "Alles was kommt" with Isabelle Huppert, for which Mia Hansen-Løve won the Silver Director's Bear at the 2016 Berlinale.

After "Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri" from 2018, Martin McDonagh has once again managed to create a cinematic work of art with "The Banshees of Inisherin". In addition to strikingly beautiful images and an unusual soundtrack, he relies on the chemistry between Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, as he did in 2008's "See Bruges... and Die". It's simply too brilliant to watch just once. And the second time at the latest: treat yourselves with the original version and a pint in peace afterwards.

Martin McDonagh

Director Martin McDonagh was not born in Ireland. Rather, he was born in London in 1970 and has written his parents' homeland into countless plays. "The Banshees...", for example, is the third part of his Aran Island trilogy to be adapted for the screen. However, it was his 2008 cinema debut "See Bruges... and Die", a black comedy that was even more successful than his revenge drama "Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri" (2017), that made him famous worldwide. Martin McDonagh's older brother John Michael is also a director ("Am Sonntag bist du tot", 2014).

Is it a horror film? Is it a comedy film? Or even the apocalypse? "White Noise" is all of these things and at the same time its own academic reappraisal, coming from the expert mouth of Professor Jack Gladney. He tries to save his family from a cloud of poisonous gas in Ohio in the deepest 80s with conviction and vigour. This mix of mystery drama and mumblecore works because Noah Baumbach ("Frances Ha" 2012, "Marriage Story" 2019) keeps a firm grip on the directorial reins and never loses sight of the already bizarre book by Don DeLillo.