Altersglühen - Speed Dating für Senioren

In cooperation with WDR – Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln

Thirteen elderly people bashfully disappear into a nondescript mansion for an afternoon – to go speed dating. The ensuing conversations at the six tables with always changing constellations, the crack-ups at the bar, the schmoozing in the restrooms and the interactions with the shy moderator expose a generation between pride and shame. It is an afternoon that will leave some with a misguided sense of triumph, some with disappointment and some with a new ray of hope. Director Jan Georg Schütte realized this highly innovative TV project without any screenplay, relying instead on his cast of German film legends (among them Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf and Michael Gwisdek), who came prepared with nothing but a character biography and who display an astonishing amount of improvisational skills and spontaneous ideas. The result is a breath taking authenticity, when the elderly creative type starts reciting her own poems and the stuck-up bourgeois tries to hide her loneliness or the blue-collar man of the town opens up about sex beyond sixty.