Skin Deep (2024)
Director: Alex Schaad Run Time: 103 min. Rating: Unrated Release Year: 2022
Starring: Dimitrij Schaad, Jonas Dassler, Mala Emde, Maryam Zaree, Thomas Wodianka
Country: Germany
Language: German with English subtitles
About the film:
Winner of the Queer Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
Seeking a retreat where they can salvage their struggling relationship, young couple Leyla and Tristan travel to a remote island at the invitation of Leyla’s childhood friend Stella, where it soon becomes clear that what the island offers is more mysterious than a simple vacation. Leyla and Tristan join another couple in a ritual to exchange bodies and see the world through the eyes of someone else – a chance to find themselves or, for some of them, a chance at escape.
“With the ability to switch taken for granted, it goes deeper into its premise, emerging with unsettling and profound thoughts about love, and trauma, and gender, and intimacy.”
—Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
Subverting genre and gender as it toggles from body swap thriller to intimate relationship drama, Skin Deep (2023) tells a story that transcends bodies, embracing the endless fluid possibilities in the question of what it means to truly love someone.
About the filmmaker:
Alex Schaad was born in Kaskelen, Kazakhstan in 1990, and moved to Germany with his family in 1993. After graduating from high school in Baden-Württemberg and doing his civil service in Munich, he worked in various positions in film, TV and theater productions, before enrolling to study film directing at Munich film school HFF 2013. His second student film Invention of Trust won the Max Ophüls Prize as best mid-length film 2016 and the Student Oscar in Gold in Los Angeles the same year. Skin Deep (2024) is his debut feature.
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