The Chairs Game

Lucia Chiarla’s directorial debut follows Alice, a 39-year-old single and unemployed journalist, as she precariously navigates life in Berlin. Despite her training, Alice faces constant rejection on the job market and endures a series of cringe-worthy bureaucratic humiliations at the employment agency, where she unsuccessfully tries to secure further training. Too proud to ask her parents for money, she maintains the façade of a free-spirited freelancer, scraping by on gas vouchers earned through market research. The only problem? She doesn’t even own a car. 

Alice is clearly the loser in the titular game of musical chairs, a familiar predicament for anyone who has experienced the harsh reality of a career that simply refuses to take off. Lucia Chiarla (Bye Bye Berlusconi!) has a sharp eye for social satire, and in Eva Löbau—queen of cringe—she finds the perfect counterpart for this bittersweet tragicomedy. 

Streaming as part of “Spotlight on Genre”, a series revisiting post-war genre films made in Germany. From the postwar era to the present, this collection spans a wonderfully unruly range of genres: cult horror, dystopian science fiction, revisionist Westerns, dark fairy tales, psychological thrillers, rock musicals, and bittersweet social comedies. Whether embracing genre conventions or gleefully dismantling them, these films show how genre filmmaking can explore social anxieties, challenge expectations, and push cinematic boundaries. Discover the unexpected side of German cinema. 

Image © Slingshot Films