Seit Du da bist (2016)

After Alina, a single mother living in Vienna with her nine-year-old daughter Lilia, finds a new job following a long period of unemployment, she asks her ex-boyfriend Jarek to take the child to violin lessons once a week. Lilia and Jarek, an unsuccessful painter who waits tables at the “Club of Polish Failures” café, have always shared a heartfelt dislike of each other, and they initially agree to the arrangement very reluctantly. While Lilia is having her lessons, he waits at the violin teacher Clara’s house, gradually befriends her sons, and meets Clara’s husband Bertschi, an art dealer and curator who wants to see Jarek’s paintings. When, after four weeks, Alina finds a student who can take over the job, Jarek offers to keep accompanying the child, as he hopes that getting to know Bertschi better will help his career. In unpretentious images and dialogue, the story then develops the growing affection both between the painter and his young charge and between him and the violinist and her children. At the same time, it becomes increasingly clear that Bertschi dislikes this growing closeness: although he is unfaithful to his wife, does not value her achievements as a musician, and spends little time with his children, he still wants to get rid of his rival. When Lilia moves to the renowned violin teacher Kocian as an advanced student, she no longer needs Jarek’s help because she can get there by bus in ten minutes. At the bus stop, she asks him why he didn’t accept Bertschi’s offer to arrange his participation in a Guggenheim Foundation competition. When he tries to evade the question, she calls him a coward and tells him that her new teacher says you have to be brave and not be afraid. Jarek then quits the café and becomes a street portrait painter.