Documentary, 2020, 90 min

Please note that the 2G rule applies at the Filmmuseum Potsdam!

What is it like for people who live in Berlin and can’t handle its speed, anonymity and change? What happens when the radius of one’s life contracts? What about young people who can’t make friends because the city’s size surmounts their social skills? A Lonely City portrays a feeling that spares no generation, no societal group, no occupational area, a feeling that seems to be symptomatic of a time in which more and more encounters occur digitally, in which long-term committed partnerships are becoming increasingly rare, in which people no longer feel at home in a large family—or are simply lonely because, whether due to work or obstinacy, they have neglected their social life? The film follows seven people between the ages of 19 and 85 who have developed very different and very personal ways of dealing with their loneliness: a long-time corner pub patron who flees loneliness at the bar while accompanied by the urn of her sweetheart; the retired weightlifter who yearns to be caressed; the 85-year-old bachelor for whom women are poems but who never wanted to marry; the single mom who feels lost as she wakes up at night to rock her child to sleep; the 19-year-old student who wonders how she will survive Berlin as someone who doesn’t like to party.