Das Mädchen und die Spinne (The Girl and the Spider)

Lisa is moving out. Mara is left behind. As boxes are shifted, walls painted and cupboards built, abysses begin to open up, yearnings fill the room and an emotional rollercoaster is set in motion. A tragicomic catastrophe film. A poetic ballad about change and transience.

The Swiss twin brothers Ramon and Silvan Zürcher compose a poetic panopticon of forms of human relationships, that meanders between a study of everyday life, a fairy-tale and a psychological portrait of a brittle world. After their Berlinale-hit The Strange Little Cat (2013), The Girl and the Spider is the second instalment of a trilogy about human togetherness. A ballad about the need for closeness and the pain of separation. Pamela embarks on a journey into the unknown, breaking away from the traditions that suffocate her. “Lapin, pizza, amour”. All she has are three words in French and the hope that marriage will change her and her daughter’s destiny.

Over the course of two days and one night, as Lisa moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara and into the one where she will live alone, many things will break and some will be repaired. “Sibling co-directors Ramon and Silvan Zürcher build another intricate web of latent yearning and silent emotion to follow their 2013 fest hit The Strange Little Cat. Deliciously ambiguous, [The] Zürchers’ movies are like prisms, capturing the things people do when they think no one’s watching…and when they desperately wish they were. (...) Few directors could get away with giving audiences so little context or plot, but the Zürchers succeed in piquing our curiosity, which is all one really needs to sustain a film." - Variety