Director’s Note

In my youth in the suburbs of Cologne, I witnessed the close bond between two boys my age, absolutely adorable soul mates. One was from a local sheltered family, the other lived in a remote orphanage – left alone by his mother, who mysteriously disappeared for good when they arrived in Germany. As their friendship grew over the years, the orphan’s traumatic past began to surface, and they both slowly spiraled hand in hand into a world of drugs and criminal activity. Eventually, the stable boy’s parents intervened and separated the two, sending their son away to an upscale boarding school in England, leaving the orphan heartbroken. After being alone for a while, the boy tried to take his own life – and then disappeared from our suburb completely. No one really has any idea what happened to him in the end, he was just gone.

This incident never really left my mind, as it raises so many morally challenging questions about privilege and responsibility in our collective lives, and became the basis for The Color of Air. Our portrayed characters share a similiar experience: One lover was pulled to „safety“ by her protective family, while the other was left alone to fall deeper into the void. We chose an analytical structure for the narrative, the intervention took place long before the story begins, so we could focus on the consequences of this decision. Reduced to a simple photograph found in a book called „Europe’s Princes,“ Sergei, almost successfully forgotten, fights his way back into the remnants of a family shattered by this very event. The allegory about “us” and “them”, Europe’s princes and those who are turned away at the fence because they are so hard to bear, is heading for an inevitable loud bang.

Were the siblings right to intervene? Could more have been done to help Luises lover? Can a group simply reject certain harsh realities of life on their doorstep and still be true to themselves? Eventually, the family must confront these long-repressed questions as the wind quietly sweeps over everything.