Mass

How to speak about the unspeakable? How to forgive the unforgivable? In this nuanced chamber play, the bereaved negotiate over guilt and atonement.

They hand each other photos, exchange anecdotes about better times, desperately struggle for words and don’t know how they should deal with each other or whether they even want to. Some must come to terms with the loss of a son, others with the fact that their son is a murderer. People brought together by fate meet in a church to find a way out of their grief and inability to accept what has happened, only to give in to their pent-up emotions in the end. Writer-director Fran Kranz frames the seemingly hopeless struggle for empathy with such tenderness that the fragility of the complex and conflicted characters becomes real. A superbly cast and well-acted psychological profile of a collective tragedy far from classic black-and-white portrayals.

Director