Rosanne Pel’s “Donkey Days” (2025) is a rowdy, rambling beast that snickers at good taste. Pel doesn’t invite us in so much as position us directly in the firing line of mostly self-inflicted chaos initiated by sisters Anna (Jil Krammer) and Charlotte (Susanne Wolf) and their mercurial mother Ines (Hildegard Schmal). Seeking Ines’s approval pits Anna versus Charlotte, and Pel’s rendering of this nasty yet loving sibling rivalry conjures the parental theatrics of Maren Ade’s hilarious and heartbreaking masterpiece “Toni Erdmann” (2016). Here, though, there’s limited catharsis—no Whitney Houston karaoke—and Pel’s distinct visual palate resembles a handheld blackboard-scratcher like “The Celebration” (1998). Still, thanks to an incredible, unsettling performance from Wolf, and an equally daring, funny/sad tightrope-walk from Krammer, “Donkey Days” evokes the heightened emotional state of reality television, making us turn away only because the conflict is all too familiar to bear.
So, who does Ines prefer? It’s only a mild spoiler to say that the film’s title teases that answer, and a sequence when Ines mentions her dear Eddie captures the irreverent, menacing spirit of “Donkey Days.” Describing individual scenes might conjure a slapstick tragicomedy or an outright horror story. To be sure, Pel takes pleasure in teasing, then retreating from genre tropes, filming meals and charged conversations close up, letting the camera (credit to Cinematographer Aafke Beernink) dart and escape, even moving up to give the audience a bird’s eye view of the combatants attacking their meals, and each other. In the lead-up to social outings or holiday get-togethers, the string-heavy score (Laura Bell is the music supervisor) throbs and shrieks, preparing characters and audience alike for pent-up emotional bloodshed.
A Family Portrait
Pel presents a full picture of a family that can love and loathe each other in equal measure, and takes no sides in observing the damage done. When Charlotte shows up to a funeral late and dangerously self-medicated, Anna picks up the slack, giving a speech and allowing older sister to stand down and recover. That they spot their supposedly dead relative (“Is that Uncle Charlie?”) isn’t the most startling part of this scene, and I laughed louder than I have in a long time when Charlotte snuck behind a door and burst out in front of a few departing strangers. Incidentally, it’s a group of Ines’ friends who thought they were coming to a birthday party, because Pel is having the most fun.
A younger Ines (Carla Juri) appears almost as often on-screen as octogenarian—“real”—Ines, and it’s besides the point to interpret what’s true or fantasy in the overall construct. It’s all so real—intensely so—that even bits played for comic relief have an amplified sense of tension that’s never too far from dread or terror. Cleaning out Ines’ house, for example, Anna and Charlotte start fighting with words and then it devolves, inevitably, into all-out war. And no way Pel would allow us to miss that metaphor: Anna puts on a helmet and hides behind furniture while Charlotte lobs keepsake hand grenades across the room. All of this happens to the tune of the La Traviata banger “Libiamo ne’lieti calici,” which, of course, happened to be the song Ines was singing when she broke the news to her kids that she has sent several thousand Euros to a donkey named Eddie. A companion piece for any melee, no matter the sparring partner.
Realness that Becomes Comedy
Nothing is absurd and everything is possible, but Pel withholds on any empty provocations or Dogme-level sadism. Pel’s script is controlled and pitch-perfect, especially when the girls go wild. The operatic highs and Bravo-esque lows meld effortlessly in “Donkey Days,” a worthy closing night selection for this year’s New Directors/New Films Festival, and an astonishing follow up to her acclaimed debut “Light as Feathers” (2018). Rather than dropping a mic at the end, Pel’s exhausted surrogates brace themselves for a future that will surely blend in with the past. Any sequel to this installment of an extraordinary family saga will feature more suffering and death, but no matter who exits next, Anna and Charlotte will always have each other. How lovely, how ominous! Libiamo! Just let’s hope no one forgets about Eddie.
“Donkey Days” is the closing night selection at New Directors/New Films. It screens on April 18th and 19th.
