Precarity as a unifying force. A German waitress and an Iranian YouTuber despair for different reasons, yet in this film—almost caricatured in its inevitability—all roads lead to Rome. That is to say: it was written that their ill-fated destinies would meet. What follows is a mountainous odyssey in search of ghosts.
The original German title echoes something like “Longings in Sangerhausen”, a small town that is the birthplace of the Romantic poet Novalis and also one of the strongholds of the far-right in the country. The ghosts of July are, therefore, ambiguous feelings that run through the particular political cinema of Julian Radlmaier, which here takes on more affectionate contours. In this fable that moves across centuries and spectral hopes, we are guided by Ursula and Neda, an East German waitress with a broken heart and an Iranian YouTuber with a broken arm, both trapped and lonely in precarious lives. The winding paths of chance bring the two together in an unexpected ghost hunt in the mountains. While stone swallers attempt to grapple with xenophobia and other perversities, Radlmaier constructs a romantic adventure film about an unlikely friendship and the longing for another life.
Lucas Camargo de Barros
