CLOUD WHISPERS
Kerstin Polte
Kerstin Polte graduated as an author and director from Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe where she studied in Didi Danquart’s film class. Subsequently she did an MA in Film Directing at Zurich University of the Arts. For many years now, she has been writing and realising fiction films and documentaries, as well as corporate videos, and web series. Her work has received several awards. In addition, Kerstin has worked as a director and editor for the youth programmes of SWR in Baden-Baden. Her latest documentary KEIN ZICKENFOX has already won five audience awards and has been successfully running in German cinemas since March 2016.
As manager and founder of Serienwerk she is the brain and heart behind this recently-founded start-up for innovative German concepts for series. With Serienwerk she was accepted into the katapult funding programme of Berlin/Brandenburg for innovative start-ups, while she received funding together with Vanessa Jopp for their series concept ÄPFEL UND BIRNEN.
First and foremost, this is a perfectly ordinary family with perfectly ordinary problems. Charlotte and Paul, their daughter Alex, and their granddaughter Jo.
CHARLOTTE (60) and PAUL (62) have been married for 38 years, 4 months, and 11 days. Since her husband recently retired, Charlotte is waiting with rapidly growing impatience for their life together to finally begin. More so because lately her memories are disappearing faster than she is making them. She keeps that to herself, though. Paul wouldn’t listen anyway, he is far too busy structuring his newly found leisure time.
Their daughter ALEX (40) is not shy about screaming at the world’s face what she thinks of it: Not an awful lot. The rest of the family are usually too much for her to bear: Her parents regard her as nothing but a loser anyway, and her highly-gifted daughter JO (11) just knows it all. Despite her young age, Jo has amassed a huge amount of theoretical knowledge and the one thing she has in abundance, apart from her insatiable curiosity, is an unshakable opinion on every issue between heaven and earth.
Lately, not only are tensions within the family increasing, there are also strange things dropping from the sky. Frozen chickens, crabs, and Jo’s cat BOOTSMANN, who does not survive the incident. And Jo, for the first time in her life, is at a loss as to what to do. She has never dealt with death in a way that was quite so concrete.
Fortunately for Jo, Charlotte finally decides not to wait any longer for happiness to come her way and goes off to pursue it by herself instead – far away from Paul. Thus, grandma and granddaughter set out - with a dead cat - and leave a baffled and slightly shocked Paul and Alex, along with their old life, by the side of the road.
An adventure begins – full of humor, tenderness and a zest for life.
ARTE
Deutscher Filmförderfonds
Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein
Bundesamt für Kultur
Maximilian Leo
Rajko Jazbec
Dario Schoch
Meret Becker
Sabine Timoteo
Karl Kranzkowski
Annalee Ranft
Bruno Cathomas
Maximilian Leo
Rajko Jazbec
Dario Schoch
Meret Becker
Sabine Timoteo
Karl Kranzkowski
Annalee Ranft
Bruno Cathomas
Sonia Salazar Delgado
Meret Becker