THE BEATING OF A MOTH'S WING

A troubled film student becomes obsessed with her mysterious neighbour.

Astrid, a 19-year-old film student in Berlin, is a troubled young soul with a schizophrenic mother and an addiction to caffeine. She has an “eye," but the question is, does she truly see? Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest to answer – and the most dangerous to ask.

Astrid moves into an apartment block in the Neukölln district with the help of her friend Kit, opening the windows on a fresh beginning. On her first night she is drawn to an apartment opposite and the presence of a shadowy figure who smokes a cigarette. Finally, through the lens of her 16mm camera, Astrid begins to “see” – and questions feed her mind: Who is the mysterious Marilyn Monroe-esque woman in the window?  What is her bizarre relationship with the creepy building manager, Polanski? Where does she go to every day at 7:02pm, to return at 11:37pm - and why?

One day Astrid is compelled to find out - and she follows her across the city, to a deserted warehouse, and down into the sleazy basement club that lies beneath it.

This is just ­the beginning for Astrid and Kit. As they climb ever deeper into the shuttered life of “Marilyn," with Astrid’s own psychological demons threatening to tip her over the edge at any moment, she and Kit unwittingly uncover a 30-year secret and deaths both old and new.