Selbstgespräche (2008)

Self-Talk takes place in a call center. The main characters are Sascha, Adrian, Marie, and Richard Harms. Sascha is looking for a job, even though what he really wants is to become a show host. So he takes a job at a call center. Marie works there too; she is actually an architect, but needs money to support herself and her son. Adrian seems to be the only one who works at the call center voluntarily, and he is really good at selling overpriced flat-rate DSL plans to strangers. Outside the call center, however, he has a hard time connecting with other people. Richard Harms is the call center’s boss. He annoys the employees with empty sales slogans (“Your smile is your capital”), but is himself struggling with his failed relationship and with his boss, who wants to close the call center. The film follows the lives of its main characters—much like in Shoppen—which are, in some cases, loosely intertwined. Their attempts to communicate in their relationships outside the call center fail, until the characters reach a low point in their lives as they have known them. Partly as a result of this exhaustion, and partly through encounters with the other call center employees, each character finally realizes that there is no point waiting for a different life, because life is happening now.