“We might as well be dead” in the cinema: Fear reigns in the skyscraper

The futuristic residential tower sits like a UFO in the German fairytale forest through which the small family rushes, armed with hammer and axe. The atmospheric alienation is mutual: as surreal as the high-rise building appears in the midst of the greyish, “Stalker”-like nature, the isolation efforts of the hand-picked curated residents of St. Phoebus are just as absolute. The places are coveted, even if the reasons for the civil emergency are not further discussed. The abstract setting gives the film “We could just as well be dead” a slightly didactic parable-like quality that one often experiences in ambitious debut films, sometimes to the detriment.

The residents have isolated themselves from the outside world

Babelsberg graduate Natalia Sinelnikova is confident enough to ultimately trust her concept. The hermetic nature of her story creates a believable one world building, in which absurd comedy and social drama strike a fine balance. Significantly, the key figure in the Leningrad-born director’s final production is the head of security for this gated community, Anna. The Romanian actress Ioana Iacob proved to be an excellent interpreter of despair comedy in Radu Jude’s bitter political farce “I don’t care if we go down in history as barbarians”. She will soon be seen in Christoph Hochhäusler’s “Learning to Die”.

Anna lives with her 16-year-old daughter Iris in the “Phoebus house” and one of her jobs is to screen new applicants. A task whose meaning Anna does not understand: no threatening signals are coming in from the outside world. But “We might as well be dead” is also a morality piece about the dynamics of homogeneous communities – although the manager of the housing complex praises the diversity. Everyone has to complete a task for the sense of belonging. And anyone who breaks the norm automatically makes themselves suspicious.

The regime in this case is fear. “Feeling safe is just as important as safety itself,” it says. When the caretaker’s dog (Jörg Schüttauf) disappears, the fragile constitution of the community is put to the test. Fear is spreading. A mishap on Anna’s nocturnal patrol nourishes the certainty that the plant is threatened from outside. A vigilante group arms themselves with golf clubs, and Anna’s call to reason suddenly turns her into an outsider in a community held together by an irrational fear.

Sinelnikova’s laboratory-like staging is exemplary, and not just for a feature film debut. Jan Mayntz’ camera really misses the rooms and narrow corridors in St. Phoebus. Behind her surveillance monitors in the “Aquarium” in the lobby of the apartment building, Anna looks like a prisoner – or like a prison warden.

(In nine Berlin cinemas)

In fact, she has a secret: her daughter has also “disappeared”. Iris hides in their shared apartment because she fears her own “evil eye”, which she can use to curse other people (and animals). As a result, confidant Anna is increasingly attracting suspicion – as are all “Phoebus” residents with foreign surnames and strange accents. Each community has its own exclusion criteria, “We might as well be dead” demonstrates how fleeting social status can be.

Visar Morina recently acted out a similar escalation between belonging and paranoia in his great drama Exile, starring Mišel Maticevic. Sinelnikova, on the other hand, is more oriented towards models from modern Greek cinema such as Giorgos Lanthimos and genre cinema (David Cronenberg’s “Shivers”), which still has a difficult time in this country. One can easily forgive her these sometimes clear borrowings. With “We could just as well be dead” Sinelnikova established herself as a hopeful new voice in German cinema.

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