My Little Sister

My Little Sister

Schwesterlein
Directed by Stéphanie Chuat & Véronique Reymond
Germany, Switzerland | 2020 | Narrative
99 minutes | English, French & German

Lisa (the wonderful Nina Hoss of “Phoenix” and “Barbara”), once a brilliant playwright, no longer writes. She lives with her family in Switzerland but her heart remains in Berlin, beating in time with that of her twin brother, Sven (Lars Eidinger), a famous theater actor. After Sven is diagnosed with an aggressive type of leukemia, the relationship between the two becomes even closer. Lisa refuses to accept this blow of fate and does everything in her power to return Sven to the stage. For her sibling soulmate, she neglects everything else, including her husband. But even as her marriage goes awry, Lisa only has eyes for her brother, who reflects her deepest longings and awakens in her the desire to be creative, to feel alive again. IndieWire writes: “Sven initially scans as the most formidable character in Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond’s moving drama ‘My Little Sister,’ but it’s Lisa who emerges as its fiery heart. Hoss and Eidinger easily slip into the twins’ close bond, with the actors adopting similar mannerisms and inflections, all the better to sell the sense that even the distance that has marked their adulthood is unable to crack what was forged in the womb. But can terminal illness? The answer is no, obviously, but Chuat and Reymond take their time unspooling a graceful drama that twists the tear-soaked conventions of the cancer drama into something raw and satisfying.”