The third feature from much feted young German director Oskar Roehler is a confident and partly autobiographical work - the central character was based on Roehler's own mother, the writer Gisela Elsner - that has already won its young director numerous prizes, including this year's German Film Prize.
Set in 1989, the film tells the story of Hanna Flanders (Elsner), an eccentric, intellectual, middle-aged German writer torn between her idealisation of East Germany and a rapidly changing society. Living alone in her smart Munich apartment, Hanna clings desperately to the literary fame she achieved many years ago. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the prospect of a unified Germany plunges Hanna further into despair and self doubt. Deciding finally to reject her alcohol-fuelled flamboyant lifestyle, Hanna resolves to resurrect her life, her career, and a dormant romance by selling everything she owns and setting out on a new, if uncertain, life in Berlin.
Driven by a tour-de-force performance from Hannelore Elsner, who is quite simply mesmerising, "No Place To Go" is certainly one of the strongest films to come out of Germany in recent years. Reminiscent of the works of such iconoclasts as Fassbinder and Von Trotta in its intelligent depiction of a troubled female protagonist and its capacity to deal with politics in social and human terms, Roehler's film - complemented by sumptuous black and white photography by Hagen Bogdanski - is by turns honest, beautiful, and undeniably moving.