The Most Beautiful Day

Andi is a thirty-three-year-old pianist whose lungs are failing. Benno is three years older, has a criminal record and a brain tumour. They end up sharing a room in the same hospice and refuse to wait for death there: they take out a loan and go to Africa. The film declines to be an illness story but does not avoid sentiment either, and it takes a long stretch of the trip before their tolerance of each other turns into friendship. Benno's noise exists to drown out Andi's fear, and by the end of the road it becomes clear one of them has been lying. Florian David Fitz wrote it, directed it and plays Andi. Matthias Schweighöfer plays Benno. The African sections were shot in South Africa, in the Augrabies area near the Namibian border. It opened in Germany on 25 February 2016, and Fitz took a Romy award for the screenplay that year. Who it is for: anyone who likes the road movie crossed with terminal-illness comedy, and who knows this strand of German commercial cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who knows the formula. The film stops at every expected station, the late reversal can be seen coming, and everyone outside the two leads stays thin.