In the summer of 1914, thirteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea.
“The Poll Diaries” hauntingly evokes the end-of-days atmosphere of a doomed society at the crossroads of the German and Russian Empires in the early years of the 20th century. Following his award-winning “Four Minutes” (Audience Awards at the Hamptons and San Francisco, German Film Awards and Best Film Award in Shanghai and Sofia), director Chris Kraus now presents the masterly portrait of a segment of civilization and humanity sliding into chaos and anarchy.