Pool of Princesses

Prinzessinnenbad, directed by Bettina Blümner, 2007 The title of this documentary film (literally ‘Pool of Princesses’) is a play on words derived from one of the film’s main locations: the Prinzenbad public pool in Kreuzberg, Berlin. The ‘princesses’ in question are three 15-year-old girls whose interconnected lives are the main focus of Bettina Blumner’s film.…

Trauma in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows

Nobody Knows, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004 How to represent trauma? This appears to be the overriding question in the movie Nobody Knows, or Daremo Shiranai, by the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Nobody Knows depicts the lives of four children who were left abandoned by their mother. The oldest child is the 12-year old boy…