Unclenching the Fists

A road movie inspired by Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

An aspiring writer sets off on a journey across Germany, following in the footsteps of great Romantics and fashionable Beatniks. But the country has changed after the war: it is no longer the Germany of the past, nor is it modern America. The young discuss poetry while the old quietly slip a noose around their necks. Traveling acrobats no longer symbolize the artist’s rootlessness; now they are a pairing of a nymphet and a half-defeated Nazi. Everyone longs to return to a “normal” life — yet ends up sowing loneliness instead.