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“It’s strange, isn’t it, that something can still hurt even though it’s no longer there.”

A farm in Saxony-Anhalt serves as the setting for the stories of various women across four eras. Alma is a seven-year-old girl growing up on the farm shortly before World War I. She is unsettled by a “ghost girl” in a postmortem photograph who bears a striking resemblance to her. The ghost girl’s gaze seems to follow Alma right through the photograph, as if she hadn’t long since passed away. These gazes persist across the different eras. Whether it’s Erika looking at us toward the end of World War II, Angelika gazing at the cornfield in the GDR, or Nelly looking at the river in the present: there always seems to be something there that is no longer actually there. 

As the film unfolds,*Looking into the Sun* blurs the boundaries between past, present, and future. For director Mascha Schilinski, the farm becomes a transgenerational repository; trauma is passed down through the generations within it. Like a mysterious ghostly girl, the calamity seems to detach itself from its point of origin and wander freely through the planes of time. In the end, however, the calamity is revealed as patriarchal violence deeply rooted in the farm—a violence that continues to cause pain even when it is no longer physically present.