Off Beat

A young man working as a paramedic in Cologne reaches other people at the worst moment of their lives every day, and the work is wearing him down from inside. His own life is empty; his friendships are shallow and he cannot sleep at night. During one call-out he meets a pregnant teenage girl and something forms between them that is never quite defined. For the first time he has to actually look at someone. It is Hendrik Hölzemann's first feature and belongs to the quiet, slow strand of German cinema in the early two-thousands. The German title is the name of a heart rhythm disturbance and describes the job and the character's condition at once. Matthias Schweighöfer would later become the most commercially successful comic actor in Germany; here he is in exactly the opposite register. Jessica Schwarz plays the girl. The narrative offers no romantic resolution, only one person waking up.