This German film was a big hit at this year's Berlinale, taking out the Silver Bear (Jury Grand Prix) for writer, director, and producer Maren Ade. Now BIFF audiences have the chance to see what all the fuss is about.

Everyone Else follows couple Chris and Gitti during their vacation at Chris's parents' Sardinian holiday home. While on the surface they seem like any crazy young couple in love, a chance run-in with another couple makes them reassess their relationship.

Ade is an exciting young German director whose second feature (The Forest for the Trees was her first) has transformed her from an up-and-coming director into one who has arrived. Her observations of ordinary people in ordinary situations have been crafted into a finely observed study of the conflicting emotions of a contemporary relationship.

Ade discussed her approach to the film with The Auteurs' Kevin Lee at this year's Berlinale after he dubbed Everyone Else one of the films to beat.

‘At the beginning I just had the idea of this couple. I was interested in whether it was possible to tell the inner life of a relationship, the things you can't express to a third person. When Gitti and Chris are coming home after the holiday, and someone asks her "How was it?", maybe she wouldn't be able to tell what happened,' she said.

Ade is one of a new breed of independent German filmmakers known as the New Berlin School for their studies of contemporary German life. Rather than focus on the past, these filmmakers are more concerned with the Germany of today, albeit not indifferent to historical influences.

While recent German films such as Downfall and The Lives of Others have examined some of the country's previously taboo ghosts, Ade and her New Berlin Film School contemporaries tackle more prosaic issues.

There is some debate in Germany about this New Wave, with criticisms ranging from bourgeoisie self-indulgence to blandness. However, fans have likened their works to those of Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni, as the term New Wave might suggest.

Ade has created a critically successful film that will no doubt resist genre-wide dismissals and perhaps attract a wider audience for an overlooked body of work.

By Liz Smith