Silent Youth (2012)

Silent Youth is a film for misfits, dreamers and lovers. It's the classic story of a coming out, but it focuses on the moments one tends to quickly forget: the first approach, the creaking of the chair while sitting across from each other, not knowing what to say. And it's about the silence.

All stories have a beginning – independently of the outcome that they might have, sooner or later. Silent Youth is above all a look at the moment when things start. The first look, the steps walking towards each other, the first words exchanged. And, foremost, the silence that intercalates the time between them, and that observes the other, waiting for the next word (which so many times you cannot imagine what will be)…

German director Diemo Kemmesies puts forth in Silent Youth the story of a first encounter that has the city of Berlin as scenario (without looking at all for the “postcards” that the tourism-oriented would refer to). Between the desolated vastitude of Warschawer Strasse’s subway open-air station, to the Spree riverside, and the abandoned track at Templehof airport, Marlo (portrayed by Martin Buchmann) and Kirill (Josepf Mattas) meet and discover each other. The first one is visiting a friend living in town, while the second is a student from a Russian family. They meet in a street soon after sunset, exchange the first words a bit later next to the trains, and chat between silences until the next morning arrives; a phone number is exchanged when exiting the subway, leaving to our imagination whether there will be a second episode to this story…

The director, who also wrote the script, focuses his attention on the way that Marlo and Kirill explore each other. Two strangers in a land that is unfamiliar to both. Outcasts, dreamers and lovers, just like the director describes them. A discovery that is done without any hurry, between fears and hauntings (each of them with their own), and the solitude that wraps them in the late hours of the Berlin dawn, leaving them alone (and us with them).