Letzter Abend

One of the best things about Letzter Abend is its setting: Hanover, one of the dozens of unremarkable midsized German cities that are special maybe to those living there, but few others. Hanover is very proper, clean and more drowsy than boring – the opposite of the nation’s hip capital 90 speed-train minutes plus eastward: Berlin. The latter is where the young couple at the centre of Letzter Abend will soon move to, lockdown-tired and ready for something new and hopefully better than what COVID-19 (politics) reduced their life to. By way of farewell, they invite some friends for a casual party in their now almost-empty apartment. The problem is that quite a few of them don’t come at all or arrive far too late, while unexpected visitors, including strangers, start to fill up the place.

Letzter Abend was shot on a shoestring budget in one week. For Lukas Nathrath and his actors, this became a dense season of do-or-die expressiveness, and a head-first dive into the deep end of emotional turmoil. No excesses, though! This is filmmaking of the lean and clear variety, classical in its conception while modern in its realisation: performance-centred, dialogue-dense and always behind its characters, right or wrong.

– Olaf Möller