The Poll Diaries

The summer of 1914. Thirteen-year-old Oda leaves Berlin and arrives at the family estate in Estonia. The house is full of German and Russian aristocrats, each in a world of their own and seemingly unaware of the war closing in outside. Oda finds a wounded man, hides him and starts looking after him. The man is an anarchist. Chris Kraus based the film on the diaries of the poet Oda Schaefer, his own great-aunt. The telling shows a class on the edge of collapse through a child's eyes: science, music and manners inside the house, and an entirely different world past the door. It is the first film of Paula Beer, who plays Oda. It won the German Film Awards for cinematography and costume design.