Germany has officially submitted Sandra Wollner’s latest feature, Everytime, as its entry for the Academy Awards, bringing a haunting and unconventional exploration of grief to the international stage. The film, which recently secured a limited theatrical release in the United States, uses the lens of digital memory to process the aftermath of a sudden family tragedy. Structured as a 124-minute drama, the narrative moves from the mundane interactions of daily life into a surreal investigation of what remains of a person within the digital machines of the modern age.
The story centers on a German family of three: Ella, a single mother played by Birgit Minichmayr; Jessie, a thoughtful teenager portrayed by Carla Hüttermann; and Melli, her younger sister played by Lotte Shirin Keiling. In the film’s early sequences, director Wollner establishes a domestic atmosphere that is both straightforward and unsettling. While the family discusses routine plans, such as sharing bedrooms and an upcoming vacation to Tenerife, cinematographer Gregory Oke employs an observational, almost voyeuristic camera style. This visual approach is punctuated by off-screen sounds that frequently distract Jessie, suggesting a presence or a reality just beyond the frame that the characters cannot quite articulate.
This tension culminates in a sudden tragedy during a night out in Berlin. After attending a drug-fueled rave with her boyfriend Lux, played by Tristán López, Jessie is found dead after falling from a rooftop while Lux was asleep beside her. The circumstances of the fall remain shrouded in a certain level of mystery, as the film suggests Jessie may have seen or been drawn toward something on the precipice before she fell. The event serves as the catalyst for the film’s deeper inquiry into the boundary between the material world and the digital imprint of the deceased.
As time passes, the surviving family members attempt to move forward, maintaining a complicated relationship with Lux that is marked by residual blame. Eventually, Ella, Melli, and Lux decide to proceed with the trip to Tenerife they had originally planned with Jessie. Against the backdrop of the summer sun, their lingering grief and resentment surface in abstract ways. Wollner utilizes the characters’ interactions with digital photographs and old MiniDV videos of Jessie to suggest that her spirit has been preserved through these digital artifacts. Ella even begins to retrace her daughter’s steps, observing anomalies in the environment that mirror Jessie’s own pre-death experiences, as if the veil between life and digital fiction has become porous.
Everytime further explores these themes through the inclusion of modern digital spaces, most notably the open-world game Minecraft. The film revisits the block-based monuments that Jessie meticulously constructed while she was alive, framing these virtual creations as enduring handprints in a society of ones and zeros. This focus on digital legacy is supported by a haunting electronic score that reinforces the film’s meditation on human memory as a living fabric in the information age. Wollner presents this exploration through an atheistic lens, treating the line between fiction and reality as the modern equivalent of the boundary between life and an afterlife.
In its final act, the film takes a self-reflexive turn, confronting the nihilism of a generation reckoning with a world of increasingly hopeless possibilities. By focusing on the imprints left by a life cut short, Wollner reaches a point of catharsis that bridges the Material and ethereal worlds. Everytime is scheduled for its limited U.S. theatrical run from November 6 through November 12, offering American audiences a chance to view the work that will represent Germany in the upcoming Oscar race.
