Jenseits von Blau (1989)

The room in an intensive care unit where little Franz lies in a coma is bathed in cold, clinical blue light. Only the unchanging mechanical sounds of his heartbeat indicate that he is still alive. The blue-black setting that twelve-year-old Maria, a girl of color, calls her own is no less cold and sterile. There is no human warmth in her surroundings. Yet these two seemingly lost young souls—Maria’s divorced parents are preoccupied only with themselves and their problems, while Franz’s greedy relatives long for the death of the dying boy—find another dimension where they can communicate and share their suffering: the world of dreams. In this world beyond blue, as the film’s title suggests, genuine feelings are possible, and Maria tries to bring Franz back to life with music and warmth. Maria senses the signals the boy sends out, and he leads her to a stately mansion. There, a strange gathering of all kinds of people from a distant past has come together; they, too, are waiting for some form of redemption. And again and again, in this nighttime fantasy, the mansion goes up in flames—a dream image that becomes firmly lodged in Maria’s waking consciousness. One day, the black girl resolves to seek out this enigmatic villa in the real world and save Franz from his terrible limbo, trapped between life and death.