One such fringe dweller is Zoe, a 26-year-old itinerant making an occasional (deutsch)mark as a DJane, but basically biding her time adrift in the city. She is the protagonist of German Film and Television Academy graduate Maren-Kea Freese's feature debut, a film in lurid colours set to the slo-mo trip-hop rhythms dictating the characters lives.

Kirsten Hartung plays Zoe as a self-absorbed and often brittle creature, but never fails to make the audience care what happens to her ­ whether engaged in an ill-fated dalliance with a pretentious self-styled intellectual or hoping to learn more about her dead, estranged mother. Zoe is a fascinating portrait of one of the 'broken characters' that director/author Freese is so fond of.

Natalie Gravenor