ABOUT

DAUGHTERS OF EUROPE is a road movie set in long-distance coaches, on motorways and in bus terminals across a supposedly borderless Europe. A cinema documentary in kaleidoscopic snapshots following the fates of very different women, their experiences and encounters.
A film about the goddess Europa told from the perspective of her mothers, sisters and daughters.

Concept
Daughters of Europe departs from a matriarchal reading of the Europa myth: not the abducted princess, but the goddess who withheld love and let nature die in protest. Following this counter-narrative, the film sets out to map Europe exclusively through female, underrepresented perspectives, using the long-distance bus network as its spine. The coach is the continent's most democratic and most invisible form of travel: one ticket, one price, radically mixed passengers, and almost always the choice of those who have no other choice.
Execution
A group of very different women form the film's kaleidoscopic structure, each rooted in a different corner of Europe, a different language, a different relationship to movement and belonging. Their stories never intersect directly. Instead, the film weaves them elliptically through associative montage, contrasting the monumental architecture of transit spaces with intimate, body-close observation. Shot over one full year to capture the cycle of seasons, the film works without classic interviews, letting dialogue and silence emerge from the situations themselves.
Results
Co-directed with Verena Kuri and developed with the Gerd Ruge Fellowship, Daughters of Europe is a ZDF/3sat co-production with bauderfilm. The film will receive its cinema release on 16 July 2026, a female sociogram of a continent in motion.