A homeless man dreams of finding a room for the night. A farmer dreams of romantic love - in the red-light district. A businessman dreams of a big career unaware that it's too late. The heroes of Andreas Dresen's metropolitan elegy are dreamers confronted with bitter reality.

Director Dresen and his team knew all along that the shooting would be a "hard and rocky journey", but nevertheless the 47 night shifts and countless winter outdoor shoots were a shock to the system.

Yet still the actors and director found space to improvise. Dresen filmed actor Oliver Bäßler, who plays the farmer, without warning him when he first entered the sleazy hotel room location. Says Dresen: "No rehearsed take would have been as immediate as Bäßler's reaction to the clinical atmosphere; the bed, the sheets, the basin and the paper towels."

The virtuoso hand-held camera and grainy film stock give the film authenticity and a subtly tragi-comic touch. With Night Shapes, Dresen, who cites Ken Loach and Gianni Amelio as influences, fulfills the promise of his earlier film Silent Country (1992). Night Shapes is honest and radical cinema in which passion and political awareness are not mutually exclusive.