Lichter (Distant Lights)

With actors August Diehl and Herbert Knaup
available on DVD in Germany

To some it’s the end of the world. To others, the gateway to a new life: the river Oder between Poland and Germany. Vibrant with expectancy, it’s a magnet for people from all walks of life on their journey towards happiness, security, and a better life.
It’s a place where Ukrainian refugees beg and bargain for entry to the “golden West” and pin all their hopes on Polish help… A place where a hapless businessman loses everything he owns but gains something more important… Where a teen-aged cigarette smuggler defies his father and brother to free the girl he loves from a detention center… Where an interpreter risks her career and her freedom to help an illegal refugee… And where an architect meets his former girlfriend and discovers that they’ve both changed too much to find common ground for a new start. At this crossroads between two worlds, where the law of the land is that of self-preservation, men and women struggle to maintain their dignity and their values as they are stripped to the raw core of their existence. Yet even in this often hostile climate, love and compassion blossom in the most unexpected ways. And although some hopes and dreams are doomed, others come to pass with the quiet joy of a small and humble miracle.
With tender realism and humanity, Distant Lights captures the lives of people seeking their footing in a world of moral ambiguity.

Links: IMDB, Film Portal