18 December 2014

Stations of the Cross (Dietrich Brüggemann, 2014)




Title: Stations of the Cross
Original title: Kreuzweg
Directors: Dietrich Brüggemann
Year: 2014
Country: Germany
Language: German
★ ★ ★

Stations of the Cross is about a 14-year-old girl and her very religious family. They are part of a very special parish: they are catholic, but they think the actual Church is very permissive because of the changes after the Second Vatican Council, so, according to them, everybody should live in a more restrictive way. They think life is full of sins and temptations and they must keep pure to get straight up to heaven. They compund the Society of Saint Paul.

This different way of living is shown through Maria's eyes: she is a teenager and she must deal with the usual problems like school, family and boys, but she must keep faithful to her society’s principles, even when they are hard to understand or apply. Pop music is satanic, but what should she do when it is played at school? Boys are sinful, should she talk to them?

The film is full of scenes that could be defined as common: a family walk, a car ride with her mom, a study session in the library… but the reactions and the dialogues are not the ones you would expect. Sometimes, the protagonist behaves in a more-than-correct way, but it is never enough: there is always something to feel guilty about or an impure though to be ashamed of.


The movie is based on the practices and doctrines of a real religious group named Society of Saint Pius X and manages to transmit the agony of the situation to the viewers, who might end up overwhelmed by its dramatic story.

The film’s structure is really original: it is split in 14 chapters and each one is named after a step of the Stations of the Cross. Furthermore, most of the chapters are filmed with a static camera and they are all sequence-shots, which makes the visual atmosphere very interesting and intense.

The movie was awarded at the Berlin International Film Festival for its script. Did you learn anything from it?

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