Vassiis Kroustallis reviews the film 'I Understand Your Displeasure at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival.
Imagine Meryl Streep in the opening shot of 'The Devil Wears Prada', coming down to the corridor and leaving everyone aghast at her mere presence as Runway's Anna Wintour. Now, reverse the situation and think of Heike, 59-year-old and aging fast (Sabine Thalau, in a terrific performance), attempting the same entrance but without Wintour's power -yet still, equivalent responsibilities.
Director Kilian Armando Friedrich, in his fiction feature debut 'I Understand Your Displeasure' (premiering at the 2026 Berlinale Panorama), manages to address, in a direct-to-camera approach and with non-professional actors, moral dilemmas across every corner of the low-wage job chain. The film's script (co-written with Tünde Sautier and Daniel Kunz) puts the cleaning manager Heike in the middle between the need for customer satisfaction, bosses' acclaim, and co-workers' adherence to the needs. This is an impossible struggle; yet, Friedrich resists an easy identification. Heike is competent, above petty demands (but still ready to listen to her colleagues' personal stories), but, most of all, aloof. She's the time management machine every employer would wish for this company; she's only put in the wrong place at the wrong times.
Which means she has to make ends meet on her own. Rather than fighting against workplace injustice, the film focuses on Heike's relationships with the other players in her life, including her personal life (with an ex-partner who has now become almost a subject of care). Immigrant everyday stories (like the work interruption to celebrate a family member's birth taking place far away), good old socialism, imminent strikes (and subsequent employee pressure) all look like pieces of a game she has to be above; and she does (to some extent). Soft manipulation of personnel and the situation helps calm all sides concerned - at the same time, she can put aside smoking (even when the regulations don't allow a break room for workers).
Between kindergarten and home care environments, the film handles with confidence a single story: if you leave people to their own devices in times of hardship, their sense of community will fall apart. Embraced with a camerawork that never leaves its main actress out of sight (some scenes are also single takes), the camerawork feels engaged and sometimes dizzy, but always engaging. The script, at its midpoint, seems to linger. Still, it rises to the occasion again and presents the classic (and inevitable) incident that will make Heike recalibrate her coping strategies and find new resources for work etiquette.
Thalau makes it all this effortless, as if she had the cleaning Anna Wintour in her skin. Playing with the right amount of reserve (which signals professionalism), it abandons it all when her core principles are being questioned. Never a loser nor a victim, she's at her best in her car when the phone exchanges during her drive from one cleaning site to the other leave her with enough distance to sound both professional and look completely lost. The film's other, multinational characters and players are equally authentic in parts (a Bosnian co-worker with an ailing mum, a Black young person who needs an apprenticeship to get a visa) that are not that remote from their actual reality.
Inspired by both Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers, the film still seeks some kind of community action (dance, party) amid the professional everyday storm to counteract its closed, definitely observed-upon environments. Even so, the film is neither claustrophobic nor revolutionary. 'I Understand Your Displeasure' is not a gut-wrenching film about the neocapitalist work economy. It is more focused on the gut-wrenching working conditions and how they shape the moral mode of action of its main character. Still keeping up an almost optimistic light (the film's third part almost begs for it) for its characters, it is made skillfully and with a heart.
Vassilis Kroustallis
'I Understand Your Displeasuure' screened at the 76th Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Section)
