22 BAHNEN – Or: How Much Control Does It Take to Let Go?

The film's smartest decision concerns its gaze. Tim Kuhn's camera, passed over in the nominations which one may regret, works with a visual language that oscillates between intimate closeness and summer expanse. In the swimming scenes this condenses into something of its own: under water there reigns a silence that is not peaceful but functional. Tilda does not dive down to flee — she dives down to mute the noise of chaos for a few minutes. Kuhn films this without transfiguration. No turquoise image of redemption, but chlorinated working-class swimming in an outdoor pool that has seen better days.

On the surface, Kuhn relies on contrast-rich, shimmering summer images that carry the promise of a lightness Tilda cannot redeem. One scene is example enough: the sisters come home, the mother has almost set the kitchen on fire. No shouting, no breakdown. Tilda reaches for the cloth bag and collects the empty bottles. The image says everything the dialogue does not have to. Meyer and Kuhn trust that a handful of shots are enough to make the architecture of a dysfunctional family visible.

Luna Wedler's nomination as Best Leading Actress may be the most deserved of the film. What the Swiss actress does here is the opposite of showreel acting. Her Tilda is reserved to the point of closure, controlled in every gesture — and precisely for that reason shattering when the control finally breaks. Wedler does not play poverty as a condition, she plays the muscle of a young woman who has learned to hold herself together because no one else will. This is not a cinema of pity. It is precision.

That Wedler and Jannis Niewöhner, nominated as Best Supporting Actor, have already worked together on Christian Schwochow's Je suis Karl, is palpable in a quiet familiarity that goes beyond the screenplay. Niewöhner's Viktor remains opaque for long stretches, a young man who hides his own grief behind laconism. The most intense scene between the two requires no touch: Tilda and Viktor walk along a sparsely lit street at night, wordless, their bodies never meeting, and yet the attraction is almost physically tangible. It is a staging choice that reveals Meyer's understanding of emotional restraint — and says more about longing than any kiss scene.

Laura Tonke, nominated as Best Supporting Actress, holds the least gratifying role of the film: the alcohol-dependent mother, a figure that in German drama often degenerates into social kitsch. Tonke resists this with a performance that neither demonises nor excuses Andrea. There are moments in which we see that this woman was once someone else — and that she knows it herself. Zoë Baier as Ida deserves separate mention, even though her performance was not nominated. The chemistry between Baier and Wedler carries the emotional backbone of the film.

What remains when the Lolas are handed out at the Palais am Funkturm on 29 May? 22 Bahnen will have a hard time against the formal ambition of In die Sonne schauen and the political urgency of Gelbe Briefe. But the film does not need to hide behind awards. It has achieved something that rarely succeeds in German cinema: telling a story that millions of readers already know, and still finding its own image. Not always the sharpest, not always the bravest — but one that does not let itself be forgotten.

Tilda swims 22 lanes. Every day. Not one more, not one less. There are people who see in this a ritual of control. And others who recognise in it a form of freedom. That the film can hold that ambivalence without resolving it may be its real achievement.

The world behind 22 Bahnen — the production company BerghausWöbke, which most recently drew international attention with September 5; the network between Wedler, Niewöhner and Meyer's previous work; Dauenhauer's growing filmography, which reaches from Tel Aviv through Lagos to Berlin; Hell's path from series adaptation to cinema — is larger than any single article can capture. Those who follow these lines of connection discover a German film landscape that is more diverse, more networked and more ambitious than its reputation suggests.