Free Radicals

A home of his own awaits the winner of a scratch-off lottery ticket. At the end of Barbara Albert's FREE RADICALS, Andreas (Georg Friedrich) may be the lucky one, but he remains unhappy: all alone, he stands in the rooms of the prefabricated house, from whose window there is a good view of the main highway. A series of characters who all share the same living space of a small town are first and foremost united by a fundamental misery: In the midst of promises of salvation and substitute satisfactions, loneliness is especially great. Most are plagued by loss - the death of a loved one, complicity in a misfortune. Albert does not follow a linear narrative; rather, she seeks to create a social picture with a network-like montage.

"Free Radicals" is a film about death and the fear of it, about the uncertain and the fact that one cannot come to terms with death. And yet the last scene of the film has something conciliatory. Someone is squatting on the ground, looking into a puddle. It's raining. It's quite banal." BARBARA ALBERT