Critic Reviews

What is truly delightful about the film is its loopy, gently slapstick sense of humor, its use of continuous running gags that pay off cumulatively (no small feat), and the dreamy sense that Schilling's somnambulism is pierced through only by the insane incomprehensible behavior of others.

This understated indie deepens its portrait of growing up by suggesting, ultimately, that anyone who thinks wasting time is a reasonable course of action needs to wake up.

Jan Ole Gerster’s deceptively slender character study has a complex undertow, subtly linking its wallflower anti-hero’s acceptance of his failings with his country’s wider atonement for its World War II past.

This day-in-the-life indie says something profound about an entire generation simply by watching a feckless young man try to figure it out.

An engaging take on a drifting character at an age when we’re all adrift.

The film's surprising, enveloping jazz score is often deliberately at odds with Niko's moody outlook.

It manages to make an entertaining story out of nothing in particular. And just when you get comfortable passively observing a passive observer, the minutest of twists becomes its own call to action. It urges the audience to consider this small story in a broader context.

A delightfully unforced comedy with a sure grasp of character and setting.

If A Coffee in Berlin has its own kind of formula and a romanticism that reads as both youthful and obscuring, it nevertheless absorbs you and makes you wonder what Mr. Gerster will do next.

In spite of its insufferably whimsical tendencies — exemplified by its original title, "Oh Boy" — the film may have turned out to be a deeply profound modern postscript about fascism. This isn't that far-fetched a reading at all.