Ich Ich Ich [literally: I I I]
Director: Zora Rux
Writer: Zora Rux
Cast: Elisa Plüss, Thomas Fränzel, Henriette Confurius, Lola Klamroth, Paul Lux, Peter Miklusz, Sebastian Schneider
Seen on: 28.3.2025

Plot:
When Julian (Thomas Fränzel) proposes to Marie (Elisa Plüss), she is surprised and doesn’t know what to say. Pleading time tot hink about it, she withdraws to her old family home in the countryside for the weekend to be alone with her thoughts. But the thing is that her thoughts are pretty crowded.

Ich Ich Ich is a creative debut that uses its central conceit in surprising and touching ways that are fun to watch. I had a really good time with it.

We all have those inner voices that actually belong to somebody else. The way our parents, our friends, our teachers talk(ed) to us becomes a part of who we are. That is a large part of how therapy works, too: we learn to speak to ourselves as our therapists speak to us. First, we hear their voice in our head. Then it becomes our own.

The film’s central idea runs with that line of thought and it is as simple as it is flexible and creative, allowing Rux incredibly diverse ways of portraying her protagonists‘ inner life: their thoughts simply show up as characters themselves. When Marie thinks about her relationship with Julian, it is natural that her ex-boyfriends would make an appearance in her head. It is equally clear that her mother and her best friend have their point of view to share.

It takes a minute to get used to as you don’t really know in the beginning who is talking. But once you get the hang of it, it is insightful, and it is also often extremely funny, like when Julian – who gets to have his own thought-people – actually has a thought police, or when we see the distinctly different versions of Natalia (Henriette Confurius) that live in Julian’s and in Marie’s head.

Rux also knows when it is enough and doesn’t overdo it with just under 90 minutes of runtime. She ends on a note that speaks just as much to her fundamental understanding of what it is to be human as the idea of thought-people: in the end, we have to decide whether we want to work on a relationship, warts and all, and have to embrace the other person with all of their thought-people in tow.

Summarizing: wonderful.