One of the more pensive and poignant films of Cairo’s International Film Festival’s digital entries, was German film "CV Attached". Directed by Andrea Schorr, it explores themes of identity, change and friendship
Although deliberately slow-moving, the director tackles some of the bigger questions in life in a sensitive and thought-provoking way. Centering around two protagonists from Germany, one is a flighty nomadic young girl searching for her place in the world; the other, a young financially secure man who is working as a corporate drone. Ultimately he represents her very antithesis.
Both are at a crisis point in their lives: the girl wondering whether the path she has been following will ever lead anywhere. The young man, on the other hand, has encountered a blip in his life plan with the recent split from his fiancé. This leads him to embark on a spontaneous road trip to Romania in order to deliver the girl to her internship in Romania, after she misses her flight.
Though constantly clashing against each other, the two characters, nevertheless, commence on an adventure that cuts across Europe, weaving in breathtaking scenes of natural beauty along the way. It is an attempt by the director to comment on how modernity in Europe often leaves people wrapped up in superficial measures of success, allowing life and the beauty of the world to pass them by.
Elaborating on that point, Schorr explained at the press conference held on 16 November, “Very often people in Europe only want to know about where you work and how much you make – not who you actually are.”
For Schorr, this is more so a story about change and friendship, and more specifically, about the need to compromise and break barriers to keep lasting friendships alive. “It is very sad,” she says, “but if I met most of my childhood friends in my life now, we probably wouldn’t become friends – we are so fundamentally different.”
This difference, encapsulated by the two protagonists’ characters, is what needs overcoming – “something that is captured by how they ‘broke so many barriers’ as they crossed one border after another in Europe,” says Schorr
In this sense, the destination (Romania) becomes a metaphor for this. Having recently joined the EU, it is experiencing swift changes, “and risks losing some of its own identity,” says Schorr.
Ultimately, this is a film that encourages viewers to consider their own lives and the scales they use to measure success. Put another way, it is very simply saying: there’s more to a person than their CV.
