Kathrin Röggla

Are these games being played by four teenagers in the back seat of a car, or is it really happening? Are they telling each other stories about the world, or is what begins like a road movie actually taking place? Two girls and two boys sit in the back of a car talking about their parents. The parents themselves don't get a word in; strangely, they seem absent. The car is travelling through the middle of nowhere in post-industrial Germany and ends up in a housing estate. Something has always already happened. A supposed accident, they get out of the car and encounter not only a man who constantly gives orders and warns them about a ‘resigning mayor,’ but also a gathering. There is also someone lying on the street. The gang of four supposedly always follows their parents and ends up in a courtroom, where they sit in the dock, first as defence lawyers, then as defendants themselves. It is a tribunal of the settlement's residents, who no longer trust the state structures and accuse their old mayor of high treason. The dynamic between the siblings is determined by concern and rivalry; guilt and betrayal are themes, as is the feeling of only being able to act indirectly (through adults). They pretend to each other that they are talking to their parents, while the scene changes. A verdict is reached, people are hunted, a dam threatens to break, animals are spotted that really have no business being there. The little sister is left behind, finally addressing her parents directly and watching the river, where an environmental disaster is looming that no one wants to notice. (No one in the settlement talks about the river.)
In the end, three of the four are back in the car and driving on, supposedly home. But now they are being chased and ‘escorted’ by other cars, and they no longer know exactly who is driving them. There are new parents and new siblings. (Kathrin Röggla)