"Das Leben meiner Tochter", which means "My Daughter's Life", is a German full feature live action film from 2019, so still relatively new. The writer and director of these rather short 85 minutes is Steffen Weinert. This was his second full feature film and first theatrical release, although I am not even really sure to what extent you can call it that because this film was really not seen by many people back when it was shown at theater. I mean I regularly go to a bunch of movie theaters that are rather indie and frequently show unknown German films and even there it was not shown. I think this is quite a pity because overall it was a very good film. I was surprised by how much I ended up liking it. Of course, it is fairly tense and dramatic as you can already see from the title. The title is alright. Could have been better, could have been worse, but overall it summarizes in an alright fashion what this one is about. We find out that a young girl is really sick and needs a heart transplant. This is the introduction. Fairly early on, there is a jump in time of no less than one year and we realize they are still waiting for a donor after these 52 weeks. So desparation becomes more frequent, especially with the father, who keeps looking for other options and eventually decides to buy a heart for his daughter. In fact, without telling his wife, who opposes the idea, even if at one point (when the daughter suffered a small stroke), she agreed to go for it because it may be the only way to save the girl's life. The mother is played by Alwara Höfels, who may be the most known cast member here. André Hennicke is of course also always easy to recognize, but he does not have a great deal of screen time, but he fit the character very nicely. Another actress that seemed familiar was Marleen Lohse, but she only has one scene, even less than Hennicke, but it was a good scene and fairly telling in the way how the mother acts towards her friend and also in terms of the views Lohse has on this complicated matter. However, the one at the very center of it all is Christoph Bach and he is deservedly the first credit. I thought he was really good and pretty much carried the second half of the film almost completely on his shoulders with Höfels being out of the picture for the most part. If we don't count the brief phone conversation when she tries to find out about the whereabout of their daughter. It was these small and individual moments that worked really well and made an utmost impact on me. I already mentioned one, but there are other characters who had only one scene, but contributed a lot to the high quality of the movie. Be it the one doing the check-up at the airport or be it the man that the father first talks to in Romania. They are all parts of a really good puzzle. By the way, speaking of Romania, I thought that perhaps somebody could attack and rob the male protagonist looking at the huge sums of money they were dealing with, but they were really criminals to everybody but their customers. But physical violence is not really a part of this movie and it's probably the perfectly right decision in terms of the script.
I have to dig deep here to find flaws with this film. Maybe one would be some aspects about the child actress. I don't think she was bad or anything, but she paled a bit next to the grown-ups, which also may have had to do with the fact that once again writing realistic dialogues for children is such a difficult challenge and Weinert also did not always succeed. The ways how they showed us how smart she is were a bit shoddy here and there, like when she indirectly criticizes him how he talks to the customes employee or like when she realizes the two weren't the Romanian boy's parents. This scene also showed how much the father had lost it already in terms of morals to trick his daughter like that, so she will give her consent and the operation can take place. Maybe another weaker moment was the really dramatic escalation when the main character sees the boy on the laptop screen, the kid that could very well be the donor for his daughter and definitely not a volunteer. Then again, this is also what i liked about the film a lot, namely that it depicts things as gruesome as they are in reality. Nobody knows what's going on over there in the Balcan region. And there was a way in which they implied this already because we hear a quote by the (real) doctor earlier about how the parents do not want to know about the exact methods they may be using. Still, the antagonists are not fools in this film. The woman's friend for example (Lohse) says it's worth a try and they do look like doctors and serious businessmen. Still it was interesting to see Hennicke when he was asked about certain things and how he reacted, like how the boy's parents do not want to meet them and how he does not even have the contact information early on when it comes to the parents. Something was fishy there. And then the ending of course. We find out the man has to go to court and he is found guilty, but gets slightly because of the heavy situation and emotional state he was in and gets a probation sentence. We also find out during the brief talk between him and Höfels' character that for now they are apparently separated, which is not too surprising because of what he did and how his partner must have suffered until he returned. But the twoo getting back together is definitely possible. We will never know. We do know, however, that after this second big jump ahead in time the little girl was not alive anymore as we see the man at the cemetery near her grave. Again, this film depicts things as harsh as they are. How she read about death, how the girl next door died, all these were indicators what fate may have in mind for her as well. I somehow felt there could be a happy ending (or hoped for it at least), so I was certainly shocked when we find out about the truth. It was a really good ending though. And it still makes people wonder if he has regrets now that he intervened because the boy (who apparently got freed by the police) is alive and would not have been had they continued with the operation, but maybe his daughter would still be alive. Could, would, should. We'll never know. But pay attention to how he tells his daughter that he sent police there to free the victims and there he is finally honest to his daughter about the gruesome events going on there, also about how it would have been too dangerous to intervene in person, in contrast to how he does not want her to read about death even earlier in the film. Oh yeah, before the first jump in time, I was a bit worried this could become a really weak film because it felt ridiculous how the exact same time when the mother tells her man that she is pregnant again the girl has the attack. Too much of a coincidence for sure in my opinion. Luckily, things got a lot better afterwards and stayed better. The outcome is this movie that I consider a definite contender for best German movie from 2019. It is underrated here on imdb and criminally underseen as well. If you get the chance to check it out, absolutely go for it. Highly recommended! I am also glad that Weinert did not feel any need to include any more pointless scene to make it a longer film. It's an incredibly tense and haunting 85 minutes.
I have to dig deep here to find flaws with this film. Maybe one would be some aspects about the child actress. I don't think she was bad or anything, but she paled a bit next to the grown-ups, which also may have had to do with the fact that once again writing realistic dialogues for children is such a difficult challenge and Weinert also did not always succeed. The ways how they showed us how smart she is were a bit shoddy here and there, like when she indirectly criticizes him how he talks to the customes employee or like when she realizes the two weren't the Romanian boy's parents. This scene also showed how much the father had lost it already in terms of morals to trick his daughter like that, so she will give her consent and the operation can take place. Maybe another weaker moment was the really dramatic escalation when the main character sees the boy on the laptop screen, the kid that could very well be the donor for his daughter and definitely not a volunteer. Then again, this is also what i liked about the film a lot, namely that it depicts things as gruesome as they are in reality. Nobody knows what's going on over there in the Balcan region. And there was a way in which they implied this already because we hear a quote by the (real) doctor earlier about how the parents do not want to know about the exact methods they may be using. Still, the antagonists are not fools in this film. The woman's friend for example (Lohse) says it's worth a try and they do look like doctors and serious businessmen. Still it was interesting to see Hennicke when he was asked about certain things and how he reacted, like how the boy's parents do not want to meet them and how he does not even have the contact information early on when it comes to the parents. Something was fishy there. And then the ending of course. We find out the man has to go to court and he is found guilty, but gets slightly because of the heavy situation and emotional state he was in and gets a probation sentence. We also find out during the brief talk between him and Höfels' character that for now they are apparently separated, which is not too surprising because of what he did and how his partner must have suffered until he returned. But the twoo getting back together is definitely possible. We will never know. We do know, however, that after this second big jump ahead in time the little girl was not alive anymore as we see the man at the cemetery near her grave. Again, this film depicts things as harsh as they are. How she read about death, how the girl next door died, all these were indicators what fate may have in mind for her as well. I somehow felt there could be a happy ending (or hoped for it at least), so I was certainly shocked when we find out about the truth. It was a really good ending though. And it still makes people wonder if he has regrets now that he intervened because the boy (who apparently got freed by the police) is alive and would not have been had they continued with the operation, but maybe his daughter would still be alive. Could, would, should. We'll never know. But pay attention to how he tells his daughter that he sent police there to free the victims and there he is finally honest to his daughter about the gruesome events going on there, also about how it would have been too dangerous to intervene in person, in contrast to how he does not want her to read about death even earlier in the film. Oh yeah, before the first jump in time, I was a bit worried this could become a really weak film because it felt ridiculous how the exact same time when the mother tells her man that she is pregnant again the girl has the attack. Too much of a coincidence for sure in my opinion. Luckily, things got a lot better afterwards and stayed better. The outcome is this movie that I consider a definite contender for best German movie from 2019. It is underrated here on imdb and criminally underseen as well. If you get the chance to check it out, absolutely go for it. Highly recommended! I am also glad that Weinert did not feel any need to include any more pointless scene to make it a longer film. It's an incredibly tense and haunting 85 minutes.
