The Seventh Continent 1989

The film unfolds in three parts, each built around a family whose quiet routines gradually reveal a mounting discomfort with the sterilized rhythms of modern life. In the first two segments, set in 1987 and 1988, we watch a single day in the life of Georg, Dieter Berner and his wife Anna Schober, Birgit Doll, together with their daughter Eva Schober, Leni Tanzer. The atmosphere is deliberate and restrained: the family performs ordinary tasks with a near-ritual precision, meals and chores unfolding in long, quiet takes. Dialogue, when it occurs, is sparse, and much of the emotional temperature is conveyed through gestures and glances rather than speech. Early in each chapter, a soft voice-over carries the wife’s reading of a letter addressed to Georg’s parents, recounting his professional successes. These letters, delivered with a calm cadence, illuminate a world where achievement is carefully documented, but human warmth feels almost absent. The day-to-day scenes are frequently almost wordless, creating a sense of stasis that hints at something unresolved beneath the surface.

In the final, decisive third part, which takes place in 1989, the family’s world explodes outward from the intimate sphere of routine into a dramatic, irreversible choice. The period begins with a visit to the grandparents, after which the husband narrates a letter written the following day, announcing that he and his wife have resigned from their jobs and decided “to leave.” The film shows them embracing a drastic plan: they intend to emigrate to Australia, close their bank accounts, sell their car, and purchase a large variety of cutting tools. A crucial moment arrives when he confesses that it was a hard decision whether to take Eva with them, but they decide to do so after Eva states that she is not afraid of death. This acceptance—whether genuine or instrumental—becomes the moral center around which the rest of the action turns.

A luxurious family meal anchors the sequence, a counterpoint to the upheaval that is about to unfold. During the meal, a phone call comes through and, in a deliberately transgressive gesture, they leave the phone dangling, choosing to ignore any further interruptions. What follows is a meticulous, almost clinical dismantling of the life they’ve built. They destroy every possession in the house in an automatic, passionless manner, ripping up cash and flushing it down the toilet. The only moment of uncontainable emotion occurs when Georg shatters the large fish tank; Eva screams and the scene lurches into a rare dissolution of composure as the family confronts mortality in the most visceral way. Throughout the destruction, the phone company arrives, insisting that the phone must be reconnected, and Georg responds with a practical stubbornness, muffling the bells and door chimes with cotton to maintain a sense of control.

The culmination is harrowingly stark: they commit suicide by overdosing on pills dissolved in water, Eva first, then Anna, and finally Georg, who vomits the liquid and must resort to injecting himself. In a stark final act of methodical control, Georg writes the names, dates, and times of death for all three on the wall, leaving a question mark for his own estimated time of death. An envelope addressed to Georg’s parents is taped to the door, a cold, formal touch that underscores the absence of appeal or plea. In his last moments, Georg lies beside Eva and Anna, watching the television’s static as the house quiets around him. Brief flashes from the film suggest that his life is briefly illuminated by memory or dream—moments that seem to flicker as if life itself is rushing past.

After the end, the film notes that, despite the explicit suicide note, Georg’s parents speculated about homicide and a police investigation was carried out. Yet the narrative remains clear: no evidence of murder is found, and the tragedy is presented as an act that crystallizes the family’s disintegration rather than a mystery to be solved.

Throughout the film, the visual style sustains a sense of clinical detachment—everyday rituals become a language of release rather than nourishment. The characters—Georg, [Dieter Berner], Anna Schober, [Birgit Doll], and Eva Schober, [Leni Tanzer]—are drawn with a quiet, almost clinical precision that makes their final, collective decision feel both inevitable and devastating. The work invites us to witness how comfort with routine can mask a deeper anxiety about existence, and how a single, irrevocable choice can reframe a lifetime of ordinary moments into a dramatic, unswerving statement about the limits of freedom, responsibility, and love.

• Georg, [Dieter Berner],

• Anna Schober, [Birgit Doll],

• Eva Schober, [Leni Tanzer]