You Believe in Angels, Mr. Drowak?

Lena advertises a creative-writing course, and exactly one person signs up: Mr Drowak, a solitary, embittered old man who lives in a run-down tower block and does not handle alcohol with any particular restraint. The course becomes a matter between the two of them — and Lena's momentum unexpectedly wakes something in Drowak, a long-buried literary talent. Meanwhile the building and the neighbourhood are watched over by the Office of Peace and Order, where paperwork long ago took the place of empathy.

This is the first fiction feature by the Swiss director Nicolas Steiner, who made his name in documentary: Above and Below won two German Film Awards. Bettina Gundermann wrote the screenplay, developing the story with Pascal Nothdurft. Most of the film was shot in black and white, and critics agree that its images are its greatest strength: Markus Nestroy's cinematography won Best Cinematography at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

Drowak is played by Karl Markovics, Lena by Luna Wedler, and the head of the office by Lars Eidinger. Dominique Pinon appears as the neighbour — the French actor known from Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Amélie. His presence is neither accidental nor decorative: this film belongs to that tradition in which an apartment block and its tenants form a self-contained, grotesque world.

The reception is divided, and worth knowing about. The film opened the Max Ophüls Preis festival, and part of the German press received it enthusiastically: epd Film called it a surreal tragicomedy full of poetry about loneliness and the power of literature. Others fault it for precisely its abundance of ideas — Filmdienst finds its many good notions undisciplined in combination, while the Filmstarts critic argues that its ambition eventually tips into self-regard. Almost everyone agrees, however, that the cast and the look of the film are worth the screening on their own.