MARRY ME!

Marriage? Eternal Love? Forget about it! But, what if suddenly, as a convinced single, you would need to stage a Bollywood-style wedding and not just as a guest, but as the bride herself? And what if while pretending to marry your ex-boyfriend you would be unable to resist falling in love … with an innocent bystander?

Kissy, a German-Indian woman in her late twenties, happily living with her seven-year-old daughter Meena in Berlin, oversees a building of rented apartments in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which has seen better days but not lost any of its charm. In the same house she also runs her cosy Café Devi. And everything is just tickety-boo, if it were not for her mega-traditional grandmother, who has travelled all the way from India to Germany with the express intention of ensuring that Kissy is married with her daughter’s father, otherwise the building, along with the café, will be sold!

What Granny does not know, nor should she find out, is that Kissy and Robert have long since gone their own separate ways. Kissy now out of options persuades her ex to play the game. But Granny does not accept a simple, civil wedding, it has to be an absolutely traditional Indian one. And so Kissy has to undergo exactly what she really does not want: not only getting married, but also Indian style…

Director

NEELESHA BARTHEL worked on various film sets before studying at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Active as a cinematographer, editor, director and actress, her films include: the documentaries EN WHY? SEE! (1999), BLING BLING (2000), FIFTY FIFTY (2002), MR. STREET (2003), the shorts LINGAM & YONI (2004) and TWO INTO THREE (2008), and her feature fiction debut MARRY ME! (2015).

Neelesha Barthel photos © Wüste Film Ost/Heinz Heiss