Winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, this is truly an ambitious work. Mascha Schilinski, who previously observed the inner world of a young girl watching her divorced parents, now purposefully brings forth four generations of girls. Though they live in different times across centuries, they remain in the same space, overshadowed by the presence of death. Each era is intricately interconnected, revealing their relationships very slowly, and the girls are highly sensitive to others and to the outside world. If living means walking alongside ghosts and the dead, how, then, do these fresh, young children learn to swim across the river of reality? As if urging us to watch the characters through the smallest of cracks, they are often trapped in yet another space within the narrow 4:3 frame, isolated like figures inside a picture frame, while the camera, in contrast, floats freely like air. Furthermore, the sound and lighting are superbly designed, as if handling a work of art. This is, without a doubt, a work worthy of being counted among the art-house films of the year. (LEE Yong Cheol)