GOETHE FILMS: Next of Kin – Family on Film

Oh, This Unspeakable Void © Komplizen Film Warner Bros

GOETHE FILMS: Next of Kin – Family on Film

Presented by the Goethe-Institut

October 8 + 13 + 15, 2026
TIFF Lightbox, Toronto
For more information, visit goethe.de/toronto/events.
For tickets, visit TIFF.

Lost, found, made: Recent German films take us inside the most intimate social unit we know—the (chosen) family as refuge or battlefield, north star or source of drift.

This year’s big German Film Awards winner, Oh, This Unspeakable Void from hit director Simon Verhoeven, gathers an A-list cast around Joachim, who finds himself caught between his eccentric new family constellation and demanding acting school following the death of his brother.

Cannes winner Claire Burger’s queer drama Foreign Language from the Berlinale competition 2024, starring Nina Hoss, brings together a German and a French exchange student as they battle their own and their parents’ ghosts.

A Berlin academic confronts the cost of the freedom she’s chosen in Talking About the Weather, the acclaimed first film by Annika Pinske and another Berlinale premiere, with Sandra Hüller supporting.

Whether tragicomedy, coming-of-age film, quiet drama or character study, family is the first story we are told about ourselves and the one we spend our lives rewriting.

Viewer discretion is advised.

The Program:

October 8, 2026, 6:30pm

Oh, This Unspeakable Void (Germany 2026, 130 min)
by Simon Verhoeven, starring Bruno Alexander, Senta Berger, Michael Wittenborn, Laura Tonke, Devid Striesow, and others

Canadian Premiere
From the producers of Toni Erdmann comes a bittersweet true story. After the death of his brother, 20-year-old Joachim is unexpectedly accepted into a renowned acting school and moves into his grandparent’s villa. Between the rigour of drama school and the eccentric, alcohol-fueled rituals of his grandparents, Joachim tries to find his place in the world—without quite knowing what role he plays in it. Directed with irony and warmth in equal measure, the film is a bravura ensemble piece set in early-1990s Munich, where loss and absurdity share the same household. The film was #1 at the German box office with over 1 million admissions in its first days and went on to win two German Film Awards.
Co-presented with the Ageless International Film Festival

“Light-footed and assured, between humorous and touching scenes—and always full of love.” – epd Film

October 13, 2026, 6:30pm

Foreign Language (France, Germany, Belgium 2024, 101 min)
by Claire Burger, starring Lilith Grasmug, Josefa Heinsius, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Jalal Altawil, and others

Toronto Premiere
Fanny, 17, leaves her charismatic but volatile mother (Mastroianni) in Strasbourg for a language exchange in Leipzig, where she moves in with Lena and her quietly unravelling mother Susanne (Hoss). What begins as a polite arrangement becomes something far more alive—and dangerous—as the two girls fall for each other and their carefully constructed identities come apart. The film crosses borders: national, linguistic, generational, sexual. Cannes winner Claire Burger, herself from a Franco-German border town, brings an insider’s feel for what it means to live between languages and between families. Two exceptional young actors carry the film’s emotional weight; Hoss and Mastroianni are formidable in support as women who know exactly what they’re doing wrong and do it anyway.
Co-presented with the Ageless International Film Festival & France au Canada

“(Burger’s) most accomplished work to date—the director movingly reveals how such shifting identities put two girls on a path to find each other and, ultimately, themselves.” – The Hollywood Reporter

October 15, 2026, 6:30pm

Talking About the Weather (Germany 2022, 89 min)
by Annika Pinske, starring Anne Schäfer, Sandra Hüller, Ronald Zehrfeldt, Max Riemelt, and others

Toronto Premiere, with a video introduction by the director
Clara has made it: She has traded her working-class village in the former East for an independent academic life in Berlin. Between an affair with one of her students and her prickly friendship with her thesis advisor (Hüller), she has little time for her 15-year-old daughter. When Clara returns home for her mother’s birthday, three generations of women collide. Pinske, previously assistant to Maren Ade on Toni Erdmann, brings the same unsparing eye for class and self-delusion to her own debut. Shot in a taut back-and-forth between urban and rural locales, Talking About the Weather is a film about what it costs a woman to become the person she chose to be and what that choice costs the mother and daughter she leaves waiting.

German Film Critics Award 2022 for Best Screenplay

Seattle International Film Festival 2022 nomination Best Film Grand Jury Prize

Part of the Goethe-Institut Toronto 2026 cultural resilience program (re)Open Minds: Adapting to the Future

Thank you to our partners at the Ageless International Film Festival & France au Canada for co-presenting.

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