Current Showtimes
orround
- Wed Jun 3
- Thu Jun 4
- Fri Jun 5
- Sat Jun 6
- Sun Jun 7
- Mon Jun 8
- Tue Jun 9
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: Germany
Language: German,English
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Tim (Matthias Schweighofer) and Liv (Ruby O. Fee) had had a tumultuous marriage, and Liv had planned to leave Tim in the dead of night and restart her life. Liv had quit her job and wanted to leave for Paris with Tim, like they had planned, but when Liv talks to him during the day, he says that it is not possible for him to quit his job just then. Tim is working on developing a game and asks Liv if they can go another day.When the two woke up, they found that the doors and windows of the apartment building they were in were barricaded by an impenetrable wall. The wall does not allow any mobile signals to go through it, and the Wi-Fi is dead. The wall is magnetic, but when too many metal objects are placed on it in a bunch, it shoots them back.Since the walls and floors between the flats could be cut or hammered through, the couple got in touch with Marvin (Frederick Lau), Ana (Salber Lee Williams), Yuri (Murathan Muslu), Lea (Sira-Anna Faal), and Oswalt (Axel Werner). Liv says that the building was constructed before the 2nd world war and air raid shelters were added to the building during the war. Some of those shelters connect to the subway system and that could be their way out.Yuri is a visitor to the building with Anton. Yuri claims that Anton collapsed in front of the wall with something like a heart failure. Anton used a pacemaker.And while all of them brainstormed a way to crack the code of this weird trap they were in, Yuri seemed to be against the concept of going out since he believed that those walls were protecting them from something catastrophic that had happened outside. In fact, he was the one who had killed Anton (Josef Berousek) for trying to bring down those walls, later killing Lea for trying to do the same, and he was ready to kill the rest if the need arose. When the group got to the basement, they found that the shelter exits are also blocked by the brick wall. All their efforts seem to have gone to waste.Anton was a senior programmer at a company called Epsilon Nanodefense. This company was located at HafenCity in Hamburg, Germany. A fire had broken out in HafenCity, and, as per the news reports we heard, it was being alleged that that incident was what had caused the Nanotech to activate and engulf every single building in Hamburg. The authorities hadn't revealed whether the fire was the result of an accident or if it was caused intentionally, but there was a good chance that the fire probably caused the servers that handled the Nanotech to malfunction and activate even though that wasn't what its creators wanted it to do. Yuri, a conspiracy theorist, was of the opinion that Germany had been attacked by something or someone, and the Nanotech was protecting its people from whatever was going on outside. Hence, he was against the notion of breaking out of the building.The wall had robbed the inhabitants of the ability to connect with the internet or watch the news on cable TV. That's why nobody actually knew if Germany was in the middle of a war. Still, people like Yuri were okay with this aggressive form of Techno-Fascism, which had turned every household into a prison. The constant information war and paranoia caused by mainstream media and "deep state" experts on social media had rotted Yuri's mind to such an extent that he was unable to question why a private company, probably with the help of the government, was allowed to install such a technology without the people's consent. Yuri just accepted that this should be their life now.The inhabitants of the building didn't have access to water, food, or any form of communication. But the notion that people smarter than the common folk are doing what they are doing for the betterment of mankind, and not because they have ulterior motives, prevented Yuri from seeing that this "advanced defense system" would eventually kill them via dehydration and starvation if it wasn't breached. Tim and Liv dared to use the tools they had to see the truth of the matter.Friedman (Alexander Beyer), the manager of the apartment, got his hands cut off when the Nanotech wall went up, and he bled to death. He was a pervert, though as he had installed hidden cameras in everyone's houses. That allowed the inhabitants of the building to see that Yuri had killed Anton for trying to break the wall.While the others were watching the videos found in Anton's secret room, Lea stayed behind to study Anton's notes and to try and find the secret of the wall itself. Oswalt died when Marvin shot at the wall and the bullets ricocheted. Lea was killed by Yuri after she figured out he had killed Anton. Anton had not collapsed from a heart failure but had strangulation marks across his neck. Yuri then burns all of Anton's notes, so nobody else can open the wall.By then, Tim, Liv, Marvin, and Ana had figured out that the wall could be opened because Anton had done so. The surviving members tied down Yuri and began working on their escape.They tied up Yuri because he was a threat and analyzed the CCTV footage of Anton creating an app that treated the bricks on the wall like a combination lock whose "buttons" could be pressed via the flash on the back of one's phone. Since Tim was a gamer and knew how to code, he was able to recreate Anton's app. However, their first try was a failure, as it killed Ana. The code turned the wall into a semi-solid state and Ana put her fingers through it. Ana is pulled in further, just as the wall solidifies and kills Ana.Since Yuri was laughing in an "I told you so" way, Marvin shot him in the chest and then killed himself because he was unable to live with the loss of his girlfriend. That left Tim and Liv to fight for survival on their own. Now, the almost-separated couple had been through a lot even before the wall went up. Liv had suffered a miscarriage, and instead of processing it together, Tim had put up a metaphorical wall around himself. He thought that, by doing so, he was not only protecting Liv from the myriad emotions that he was feeling, but he was also protecting himself from the pain of the death of their first child.Despite that, Liv had tried to rekindle their relationship, but Tim never allowed her to succeed, which was why Liv had decided to leave him and start a new life. If the wall hadn't gone up, that's what she would've done. So, bringing down the Nanotech wall sort of served as a metaphor for the couple breaking the barrier that they had created between them because of an incident that was beyond their control. They figured out that every button on the phone emitted a certain number of flashes. They figured out the right sequence of flashes by counting the flashes from Anton's phone, which they had on camera.That said, while they tried to breach the Nanotech wall, Yuri came back from the dead because the bullet had missed all the vital organs, and tried to kill Tim and Liv.Thankfully, Liv knocked him out, and the couple finally escaped the apartment. Before all this went down, Liv had proposed the idea of using their old caravan to drive all the way to Paris and just enjoying life. Since this whole ordeal had taught them, especially Tim, to prioritize family over work, they seemingly chose to carry out that original plan instead of figuring out why Hamburg was covered in Nanotech bricks and how it could be reversed, because they would get nothing out of that. Making up for the time they'd lost would be more fruitful for them.An emergency news broadcast revealed that the fire that was mentioned at the beginning of the film took place inside the Epsilon Nanodefense facility. The fire had apparently activated the Nanotech-based defense system, causing it to spread all across Hamburg overnight, locking everyone inside their buildings. It was unclear if the fire was due to an accident or if someone had tried to sabotage the secret project.
Storyline
- A couple whose apartment building is suddenly surrounded by a mysterious brick wall must work with their neighbors to find a way out.