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Successful movie star Daniel (Daniel Brühl) is about to land a major role in a big superhero movie. He is due to audition in London later today for the role in the Hollywood blockbuster. There's still a little time before departure, so Daniel stops at his favorite pub on the way from his Berlin apartment to the airport. Here he meets Bruno (Peter Kurth), who engages him in the usual small talk after asking for his autograph. Or so it seems. But more and more the supposed stranger reveals an unusual knowledge about the actor, which is not limited to his work. Daniel is first flattered, then puzzled - and when the conversation takes a surprising turn, he's suddenly a little scared, too - for good reason...

I admit: At the beginning of Daniel Brühl's directorial debut "Nebenan", I feared that the film would get on my nerves pretty quickly. While I was amused by Brühl's self-deprecating portrayal of a movie star, I had my problems with the dialogue at first. But this impression was quickly put into perspective. The screenplay by Daniel Kehlmann ("Die Vermessung der Welt"), which is based on an idea by Daniel Brühl, cleverly combines various themes with each other - to extremely entertaining and rousing effect. This is about gentrification, about how we become transparent people through the traces we leave behind on the net, it is about the still difficult relationship between East and West and about anonymity in the big city.

The battles of words that Daniel and Bruno engage in are sometimes bitterly wicked, sometimes outrageously funny, and then again deeply rooted in reality. Even though Daniel is a somewhat aloof movie star, one can certainly relate to his shock and angst over the secrets Bruno gradually reveals. The chamber-play-like setting in the somewhat seedy corner pub is just as important to the atmosphere of the story as the superbly written and no less superbly performed dialogue.

"Nebenan" is a real surprise - not only dramaturgically, but also in terms of craft. Often, films that are almost confined to one plot location are not the stuff that necessarily belongs on the big screen. But Daniel Brühl has succeeded very well in turning his debut into a tongue-in-cheek comedy that works really well as a communal experience in the cinema. A great pleasure that can be warmly recommended especially to lovers of somewhat more sophisticated cinema fare. Absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp