Seven people with problems and two therapists. Spending time in a lonely hut in the mountains. A whole week therapy which could be strenuous but healing. One person has an eating disorder. The other is neurotic, another has a drug addiction problem and someone has panic attacks. In the one case a person always carries a photo album of his family with him. Group dynamics and no hectic can be an explosive mixture for the two therapists. Strange things happen. All seven use cameras to document there progress. They show mysterious clues from an uninhabited house. Someone leaves deadly messages, somebody that they know in their weakest and most afraid state of mind. From the nine people there are only eight...seven...six...

deutscher Spielfilm

A commissioned work for a television series on WDR, A House for Us. FROM THE FAMILY OF REPTILES and THE ISLAND are a complete program in two episodes. After all with Michael Ballhaus as the cinematographer. Ute (Katja Wulff), an 8 year old girl, constantly runs away from home and the youth center to escape into her own world. She spends many hours at the zoo and especially in front of the crocodile compound. Monika Brehm (Lisa Kreuzer), the kindergarten teacher, tries to find an entrance into Ute’s world. She realizes that her escapes are a form of withdrawal from her parents and the grown up world.

Freddy, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to New York after Hitler's invasion, and Adler, a left-wing intellectual originally from Berlin, return to Austria in 1944 as soldiers in the U.S. Army. Freddy falls in love with the daughter of a Nazi, and Adler attempts to go over to the Communist Zone. But with the advent of the Cold War and continuing anti-semitism, the idealism of both characters is shattered as they find themselves surrounded by cynicism, opportunism, and universal self-deception.

One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions.