27 Steps

21 min, 2021

On the first day of the Corona lockdown, the director’s father is picked up by an ambulance. He dies shortly thereafter.

Mother and daughter mourn in the parental apartment, isolated on 49 square meters — and connected to the outside world only by telephone. With painful intimacy, these phone calls exemplify the loneliness of the mourners in pandemic times. Photographic images of the desolate apartment are marked by an intense geometric strictness, which, in spite of the confinement, also creates a certain distance to the inevitable.
“27 STEPS“ thus leaves room for interpretation and deals with a universal question: How does isolation affect us when we are dependent on solace and help? This is a very personal film which puts a magnifying glass on the circumstances that we are all experiencing right now.

Festivals and Awards

  • Best Documentary
    San Francisco Short Film Festival Close:Up
  • Best Documentary Short
    Reykjavik Film Festival Close:Up
  • Best Documentary Short
    Budapest Independent Film Festival
  • Best International Short Documentary
    Jakarta International Independent Film Festival
  • Jury Award in the category „Venture“
    Flensburger Kurzfilmtage
  • Best Covid19 Short Film
    Hollywood Golden Age Film Festival
  • Querkopf Award Brücke e.V. Flensburg
  • World Premiere Visions du Réel, Nyon
  • German Premiere International Short Film Festival
    Oberhausen
  • Concorto Film Festival, Piacenza
  • Cannes: Shortfilm Corner
  • Attention Berlin Film Festival
  • KFFK Short Film Festival Cologne
  • Dublin World Film Festival
  • Paris Woman Festival
  • Toronto Independent Film Festival of Cift
  • New York Nile Gallery
  • San Francisco Indie Short Festival
  • Berlin Shorts Award
  • International Short Film Week Regensburg
  • Reykjavik Film Festival
  • Budapest Independent Film Festival 
  • Close Up: San Francisco Short Film Festival

REVIEWS

"27 Steps is a moving, visually powerful documentary that manages to bring a very personal story to the viewer."

MARINA D. RICHTER, VISIONS DU RÉEL

"When usual mourning rituals are suddenly not possible, other ways are needed. In black and white still lifes of the parental home, with a sound collage of calls from friends and relatives, the mother's voice, breaking, supporting the daughter until she herself can no longer be the support. Impressive."

FILMVERSTAND.NET

"27 Steps is an exercise in mourning, a farewell, the promise of a reunion, a memory, a movement in which only the slow fading of the rays of light falling through the windows cancels the mortification of the photographic image and tells of something away from stillness."

CRITIC.COM

TEAM

Director: Andrea Schramm
Camera: Sebastian Mez
Editor: Grete Jentzen
Sounddesign: Michal Krajczok

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