It is the summer of 1958. She is Austrian, he Swiss; she is a poet, he a playwright; she is reckless and fragile, he is adventurous but conservative. When Ingeborg Bachmann first meets Max Frisch in Paris, they are both adored by literary circles and readers alike. Over the next four years, they break, stretch and redefine their relationship and indulge in experiments in emancipation. Unable to establish a shared life between Zurich and Rome, Frisch’s jealousy casts a shadow over Bachmann’s talent and popularity.

A delicate retro-drama with biographical interludes that captures the parlour life of the creative intelligentsia and the glamour of the post-war generation. The film was directed by Margarethe von Trotta, a pioneer of New German Cinema and a feminist, whose grandmother was a Baltic German from Latvia, descended from the Trotta-Treyden family. The film was selected for the Berlinale’s main competition and is a tribute to Bachmann (1926–1973), who, as von Trotta, now 81 years old, says, always expressed her disapproval of the comfort that men provide. The film’s power is evident in Vicky Krieps’s (winner of Best Actress at last year’s European Film Awards) portrayal of Bachmann as a literary woman glowing with elegance and intelligence. With her own thoughts and will, an open mind and body, her self-sufficiency will be “a little too much” for some, but “just perfect” for others.

This film is screened as part of a cooperation with Lācis, lauva un zars.