Info
Logline
Borrowed happiness: life, love, and lament at Germany’s first department store with a credit plan.
Driven by a desire for democracy and prosperity in the 1920s, Jewish merchant Arthur Grünberg opens his Jonass department store in downtown Berlin. There he employs Vicky Maler, a young woman from the countryside who has just moved to the city in search of a better life. In the microcosm between Torstrasse and Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Vicky meets a young musician named Harry. The two become lovers, but are repeatedly driven apart by inhibitions, class distinctions, and not least by the events of German history. Nonetheless, they always manage to find their way back to each other over several decades of a turbulent century.
Meet the director
Sherry Hormann, Umut Dağ
Sherry Hormann was born to a German family in Kingston, New York, in 1960. Six years later, she and her family moved back to Germany. She attended the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) prior to being a director of continuity and assistant director for Bavaria and Constantin Film on various television and feature-film projects. Since 1986 she has been a director, screenwriter, and film editor. Her first feature film, LEISE SCHATTEN (1991), received several awards. Popular motion-picture comedies followed, including FRAUEN SIND WAS WUNDERBARES (1994) and IRREN IST MÄNNLICH (1996). Hormann also worked on several projects for television, writing and directing two episodes of the TV series BELLA BLOCK, among other things. The literary adaptations WÜSTENBLUME (2009) and 3096 TAGE (2013) represented a turn to dramatic material. For the cinema, she most recently directed the feature film NUR EINE FRAU (2019), for which she received the Bavarian Film Award for best director. For television, she most recently adapted Dörte Hanse’s novel “Altes Land” into a two-part TV movie and directed six of the twelve episodes of the series HAUS DER TRÄUME.
Umut Dağ was born in Vienna in 1982. Starting in 2006, he studied directing at the Film Academy Vienna. After receiving the First Steps Award for his short film PAPA in 2011, he opened the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 2012 with his first feature film, KUMA. His second feature film, RISSE IM BETON (2014), also premiered at the Berlinale. His feature film DAS DEUTSCHE KIND was nominated for the 2019 Grimme-Preis, among others, and earned him the German directing award Metropolis. Umut also routinely works in television, having directed three episodes of TATORT, among other things. He also directed two episodes of the TV three-part miniseries VIENNA BLOOD, making his international debut in 2019 and earning the Austrian Romy award in 2020. In 2021 he directed the German-Austrian miniseries AM ANSCHLAG – DIE MACHT DER KRÄNKUNG.