Sasha

Love makes life difficult for an aspiring musician with an old-fashioned family in this gay-themed comedy drama from filmmaker Dennis Todorovic. Twentysomething Sasha (Sascha Kekez) lives in Cologne, Germany, with his family, who emigrated from Yugoslavia two decades earlier and now run a pub. Sasha has considerable talent as a pianist, and his mother, Stanka (Zeljka Preksavec), is convinced he has the ability to accomplish great things, while his father, Vlado (Predrag Bjelac), would be happy if he just made a decent living. Also sharing the family's cramped apartment are Boki (Jasin Mjumjunow), Sasha's brother who rows competitively, and their Bosnian uncle Pero (Ljubisa Gruicic), a singularly inept handyman. Sasha is supposed to be training for an audition with a prestigious music school, but other things are distracting him. Sasha is gay, but hasn't told anyone, especially his parents, who are deeply conservative about such matters. Sasha also has a powerful crush on his piano teacher, Gebhard (Tim Bergmann), and when Sasha learns Gebhard is moving to Vienna, he must find a way to declare his feelings before it's too late. Explaining his situation to his close friend and fellow music student Jiao (Yvonne Yung Hee) only makes things worse, as Sasha realizes she's been carrying a torch for him. And when Sasha does hatch a scheme to tell Gebhard his secret, nearly everything that could go wrong does.