Sandra Wollner’s Everytime explores grief through an unconventional family dynamic. After a devastating incident involving 16-year-old Jessie, her mother Ella turns to Lux, the boy who spent that fatal night with Jessie. Rather than blaming him, she invites him to Tenerife with her younger daughter Melli, on a holiday that was originally planned for Jessie. The trip reveals how differently people respond to loss, guilt and the need to move on. Wollner avoids emotional manipulation, evoking a sense of unease through her restrained visual style and subtle performances. Winner of The Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Everytime raises questions rather than offering comforting answers.

Everytime centres on a tragic incident in which 16-year-old Jessie spends the night with her friend Lux on the roof of an apartment block in Berlin. Afterwards, her mother Ella (an extraordinary Birgit Minichmayr) has no choice but to get on with her life. Others hold Lux responsible for the tragedy, but surprisingly, Ella seeks to reach out to him. What’s more, she asks him to join her and her youngest daughter, Melli, on a holiday to Tenerife – a trip that was originally intended for Jessie. On the Spanish island, it soon becomes clear that grief is a deeply personal matter and that everyone copes with loss in their own unique way.

The third film by the Austrian director Sandra Wollner centres on one of the most life-changing events a person can experience, yet the filmmaker deliberately chooses to play down the drama of this ordeal. Or so it seems at first glance. Wollner, much like her compatriot Michael Haneke, for example, masterfully succeeds in infusing everyday events with a simmering sense of unease. This was already the case in her acclaimed previous film The Trouble with Being Born (2020) and is even more apparent in Everytime. This earned her the top prize earlier this year in Un Certain Regard, the most important side section of the Cannes Film Festival. In the past, this prize has regularly gone to films that have stood the test of time better than some Golden Palms, such as Marco Tullio Giordana’s La meglio gioventù or Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth.

Wollner opts for a detached mise-en-scène without becoming aloof. The seemingly simple observations of everyday events are, in reality, tightly composed images. That same understated approach characterises the music. If this were a Hollywood film, the emotions would be emphatically underlined and driven by the soundtrack. Composer David Schweighart, however, has opted for a subtle score that gives the viewer the space to decide for themselves what they want to feel.

That whole approach fits perfectly with the kind of film Everytime is: one that raises questions rather than neatly serving up answers on a plate. It’s not a film you simply sit through, but one you experience.

https://www.filmfestival.be/en/film/everytime