Forms of Modern Exhaustion

A documentary by Sascha Hilpert | 90 min | 2024 | D

The film tells the story of three exhausted people who meet in a Sanatorium. The film deals with the socio-political context of self-optimization in a competitive society and devotes itself to the dark side of autonomy. The film turns a house into a setting for an archeology of exhaustion and interweaves documentary scenes from the sanatorium with a strand of staged patient stories. The film approaches the popular topic of "burnout" in an unusual way and goes on a journey through time to the last sanatorium of its kind: the Dr. Barner Klinik in Braunlage in the Harz Mountains. Through letters, diary entries and historical files from the house's treasure trove a panopticon of guests and symptoms emerges in times of increasing exhaustion, with the house itself becoming the protagonist of the film.