The last short Schanelec made before her debut feature, I Stayed in Berlin All Summer confirms her commitment to narrative filmmaking while brazenly flouting the conventions of film grammar. The opening, which introduces the two central couples, scrambles continuity to heady effect. Schanelec’s aesthetic strategies might be initially disorienting, but the storytelling remains perfectly coherent. The character configuration gradually crystallizes, while the startling editing and non-naturalistic performances grant us keen insight into the couples’ respective dissatisfaction and sense of estrangement. The issue of understanding—paradoxically both the primary preoccupation of Schanelec’s cinema and, for many viewers, the primary obstacle to its appreciation—is directly addressed in the conclusion. Nadine, an aspiring author not coincidentally played by Schanelec herself, says she wants readers to understand her writing, but in the way that music is understood, as a rush of memories, as an indescribable, yet unmistakable feeling. – Giovanni Marchini Camia