Everyone But Us
2023 · 30m · Germany
Directed by Diego Hauenstein
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, tender, tense
Two siblings hiding their love in Berlin face crisis when an unintended pregnancy upends everything.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone But Us plays the incest card so earnestly it almost disappears into prestige melodrama—which is exactly why it nearly works, except the film seems more interested in being forgiven than in actually disturbing us.
Hauenstein's thirty minutes sit in deliberate conversation with the European intimate drama tradition, using Berlin's architecture and the tightness of the two-hander to create a formally austere space where the pregnancy becomes less plot device than rupture in a carefully composed ethical frame.
The film's real leverage is the editing rhythm in the second act—long static shots that refuse to cut away, forcing the viewer into the siblings' claustrophobia in a way that a faster pace would've dissolved completely.