Next Door (Nebenan)

AroView: This darkly comic “two-hander” is the accomplished directorial debut of actor Daniel Brühl (Goodbye Lenin, Rush) who plays a thinly-veiled version of himself to skewer celebrity, privilege and the movies.

Leading an enviable life as a famous actor who lives in a stylish penthouse apartment in the former East Berlin with his wife and children, his latest Hollywood screen-test appointment is interrupted by an encounter in a local dive bar with a middle-aged “fan” (a deliciously sardonic Peter Kurth) who turns out to be much more than an over-opinionated neighbour.

Written for the screen by best-selling German author Daniel Kehlmann, the verbal sparring laced with schadenfreude makes for a wryly entertaining comedy of wits, founded on the divisions that continue to haunt post-unification Berlin.

“A delightfully taut, blackly comic satire.” ~Christopher Machell, CineVue