Die Briefe meiner Mutter (2014)

Katharina Hellmer is a dedicated political journalist who leads a happy life in Berlin with her daughter Laura. Laura has never seen her father. As far as she knows, from what her mother has told her, he was a Spanish war photographer who lost his life while on assignment in a crisis zone. But the day before her eighteenth birthday, Laura finds letters from her mother whose contents suggest that everything was quite different: in reality, Laura’s father seems to be from Chile and not dead at all. Furious, Laura decides to catch the next flight to South America and look for her father. Once there, she meets a student named Luis and asks him to help her find her father. Together, they discover that her mother once investigated politically questionable events under the ruling Pinochet dictatorship. Her reports also revealed torture ordered by the Chilean secret service. However, the two find no real lead to her father. Katharina learns that Laura has gone to Chile and immediately follows her. Laura, however, does everything in her power to finally meet her father. Katharina gives in to the pressure and takes her daughter to a landowner. He is surprised to hear that he has a daughter. But Laura is clever, and before long it becomes clear that her mother has once again not told her the whole truth. By this point, the screenplay is visibly veering in several different directions. At one moment, Laura intends to visit the graves of torture victims with the student Luis; at another, she practices shooting with her alleged father; and at yet another, she plans to have a picnic by the sea. By the end of the film, Katharina really has no choice. If she wants to reconcile with her daughter, she will have to tell her the whole truth, including the experiences she had long since tried to repress.