Superegos 2014

Nick Gutlicht, Georg Friedrich, is a petty thief who makes his living by dealing in stolen property, notably the illegal resale of valuable books. He also owes money to a rival criminal gang and must keep his whereabouts hidden. By a twist of fate, he ends up at the lavish lakefront home of Curt Ledig, André Wilms, an elderly former Nazi philosopher who now lives in relative isolation at Ammerssee. Despite his recurring amnesia and a peculiar fear of kitchens, Ledig refuses to move in with his worried daughter, setting the stage for an unlikely arrangement.

Ledig’s daughter and family hire Nick to care for Curt, hoping the arrangement will keep the controversial thinker settled and productive. What begins as a practical accommodation quickly spirals into a tense, intimate partnership where two incompatible lives are forced under one roof. Curt regards Nick as an ideal research subject and subjects him to a sequence of perplexing, unsettling acts of therapy that blur the line between help and manipulation. For Nick, this new situation becomes a marketable opportunity: he notices potential access to Curt’s vast library and a chance to shore up his own faltering finances.

Meanwhile, Nick’s casual lover and fence, Norah, Susanne Wolff, grows increasingly fed up with his inability to commit. The tension between Nick’s need to hide from creditors and Norah’s demand for certainty intensifies as the credits’ pursuit closes in on Ammerssee. The situation is further complicated by Curt’s family’s decision to visit, pulling Nick deeper into a web of loyalties and obligations he hadn’t anticipated. The dynamic between the two men evolves in unexpected ways as Nick begins to see some positive outcomes from what he calls the “therapy,” even as the premise of their strange pact grows more morally ambiguous.

As the alpine sun sinks, the fates of this odd couple become tightly interwoven, and the boundaries between caregiver and ward, pursuer and pursued, start to blur. What unfolds is a dramatic, intimate culmination set against the solitude of the mountains, leading to a startling resolution that reframes everything that preceded it. The film threads suspense, dark humor, and moral ambiguity into a meditation on power, dependence, and the limits of control, all while keeping the men at the center of a tense emotional experiment.