End of winter. Two hours at Orly Airport in Paris. The departure hall is full of
people. A young woman on the way home to her husband falls for a
stranger. A mother and her nearly grown son are travelling to the funeral of
her ex-husband, the boy’s father. A young couple on their first big trip
abroad lose touch with one another. A woman finally dares to read her husband’s
break-up letter in the soothing anonymity of the public space. All are
waiting for their planes. Completely absorbed in their immediate concerns,
they move through the impeccably structured and functionalized building,
unaware of a looming threat outside that will result in the airport’s imminent
evacuation.

Angela Schanelec on the origin of the idea for "Orly": "Reinhold
(Vorschneider, the film’s cameraman) and I were in Paris for the release of
"Marseille", waiting for the return flight to Berlin. We were sitting in the
restaurant where we later shot the movie. It is very beautiful, in a big hall
flooded with light. Everything looks spacious and transparent, and people
have their own place in it. I began wondering what stories they might have.
What made me decide to shoot the film there was that this room was made
for the people in it. It doesn’t put them in question, and that makes them
attractive, or at least bearable. I had the feeling there that everything is possible,
nothing is false. Of course my idea certainly had to do with my longstanding
interest in urban spaces that, despite their anonymity, tie people
together."

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)