Boundaries

Nine young actors leave behind their daily lives in Berlin and travel to the
country to audition for a summer theatre production to be performed in
the ruins of an old church. A once-renowned Swiss director is using this
week of rehearsals to find the lead for this production of "Hamlet". The director
is staying privately at the home of an old woman, but the actors are
being put up at a run-down hotel with very thin walls.

A wild emotional merry-go-round ensues. Far away from their day-to-day
lives, the young hotel guests soon find themselves transgressing all sorts of
boundaries. Envy, competition, sexual desire, love, yearning and existential
crises soon take hold and, before long, they are no longer sure if they’re in
Shakespeare’s world or in a play by Chekhov or Tennessee Williams.

Before they take to the large stage in the church ruins, they rehearse in an
old cinema. Timo, the cinema’s sixteen-year-old projectionist, finds himself
magically drawn to the kooky and apparently permissive theatre troupe. He
attends all the rehearsals and hangs on their every word. He and the director
even strike up a friendship. The boy is impressed – not just because the
director teaches him how to fence – but because this is the first time he has
been taken seriously as an adult.

Armed with his new-found self-confidence, Timo falls in love with one of
the actors – the somewhat introverted Sarah – and this sets off a chain reaction.
Sarah has just split up from her boyfriend and is thinking about aborting
her pregnancy. Feeling euphoric, she falls in love with Daniel, an honest
family man, but continues to use Timo’s affection to her own ends in a
clever game of jealousy. However, within a short space of time, these comic
antics turn into a tragedy. But, just as in real life, when somebody drops out,
the role is filled by someone else.

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)