“So many bright lights, they cast a shadow, but can I speak?
Well, is it hard understanding, I’m incomplete?
A life that’s so demanding
I get so weak
A love that’s so demanding
I can’t speak …”– From “Famous Last Words” by My Chemical Romance.
Trigger Warning: Thanks for Nothing opens with a suicide attempt and the fascination with death courses throughout, which may be difficult for sensitive viewers. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideation (active or passive), help is available to you.
There’s no telling where some people’s pain comes from. It could be from a seemingly mundane act from the outside that’s profoundly impactful on the inside or it can be caused by a moment in time that causes all who observe it tremble. Wherever the pain beings, without proper treatment, it grows until it feels like it’s screaming inside one’s head, demanding attention with the threat of raising its voice again. This is the core element of writer/director Stella Markert’s (Krocketpartie) feature-film debut, Thanks for Nothing (Danke für nichts), having its North American premiere in the Global section of SXSW Film & TV Festival 2026. Intermixed with teenage apathy and social anarchy, Markert’s Thanks for Nothing is unapologetically brash, crass, heartbreaking, and uplifting — a hodgepodge of all the things that make adolescence hard regardless of time, place, class, or privilege.
Lea Drinda as Katharina in THANKS FOR NOTHING. Photo courtesy of Antipode Sales.
Four girls — Ricky, Malou, Victoria, and Katharina (Safinaz Sattar, Zoe Stein, Sonja Weißer, and Lea Drinda respectively) — live together in an apartment as part of a social program at a German school and are overseen by social worker Ballack (Jan Bülow). Each of the girls has been in-and-out of the system and cherishes the life they’re created together in which they can do just about anything they want, especially given Ballack’s blasé attitude to responsibility. But when Katharina tries to take her life (again), the four are forced to face a series of uncertain truths they’ve been avoiding for some time.
Markert infuses Thanks for Nothing with a silly and trivial energy, despite dealing with some heavy material throughout. This six-part tale (a prologue, an epilogue, and a chapter centering each roommate) opens with Katharina’s latest attempt, establishing the character dynamics before diving into the character introductions which start each new chapter of individual segments. Opening this way ensures that, despite the comically executed elements, there is a painful throughline that rumbles throughout that asks, “why do we live?” Especially as we get to know each of the four girls, their personal lives absolute messes made by adult disaffection, this question grows louder with each new chapter. Smartly, while Katharina is the one dealing with suicidal ideation/fixation, she’s not the only one wondering what this life is all about. Whether the question gets a satisfactory answer is up to the viewer, but it all seems a bit too neat by its conclusion, a little too satisfactory given the depth of the question and the way in which Markert often deals in people speaking for others rather than characters speaking for themselves. This method works beautifully when Sattar’s Ricky uses a combination of physical movement and vocal delivery to underscore when what’s said carries a different intention or meaning, same with Weißer’s Victoria, but struggles to carry the same impact when Drinda’s Katharina never tells anyone else what she’s thinking re: suicide and Stein’s Malou doesn’t speak at all. Answering the question is important to whether or not the audience comes away satisfied or dissatisfied by the ending of Markert’s tale and, while one can understand that interpretation is up the viewer, the absence of a more direct interrogation leaves one feeling somewhat unfulfilled.
L-R: Safinaz Sattar as Ricky, Sonja Weißer as Victoria, Jan Bülow as Ballack, and Zoe Stein as Malou in THANKS FOR NOTHING. Photo courtesy of Antipode Sales.
Markert does beautifully imbue the film with a terrible irony, creating laughter while we watch repeated rejection and social isolation. This comes via the formless narrator who introduces each of the girls at the start of their specific sections, informing us of the ways by which selfish adult behaviors shaped these girls into the teenage social anarchists we hang out with for a spell. Additionally, from time to time and rarely in a predictable manner, the characters will address the camera, the wall-breaking failing to shatter the illusion of fiction; rather, this act of speaking to us not only supports the anarchistic elements of the film (what is a fourth wall if not a technical convention worth shattering when it suits them?) but also serves to remind the audience that we’re not just watching characters struggle —we’re watching people struggle. Thus, even when the situations are heighted and the editing from Vreni Sarnes (Hot Dog) and Jörg Schneider (When I Bleed) give the intros pep to make up for their dour content, we laugh at the absurdity without forgetting that these young girls grow up to be the roommates we’re investing in. So, while it may be funny to observe a young Katharina being carried out of a lake by two nuns or a young Victoria dominate a classroom, these intros aid in forming a picture about who they are as near-young adults (18 years old when the German government and their respective programs cut them off) who can barely function within a conventional system. Laughter helps the pain and the sisterhood that Markert establishes among the four is the entire reason that, even with the humor, the audience doesn’t crumble under the weight of crushing melancholy and the sensation that adulthood is comprised of idiots, so why would someone want to join?
However one feels about Thanks for Nothing in the end, there’s no questioning its intended thoughtfulness or the performances from the cast. Production designer Fritzi Heubaum (Toubab) assigns a color to each of the four main characters, using color theory and production design to convey who they are and how they see themselves with each title card: Katharina is a cold blue, Ricky an unvarnished white, Victoria a deep red, and Malou a natural green. This doesn’t come out in the costume design (though you’ll note color flourishes here and there), but it’s more akin to their rooms, their sanctuaries from people. From here, the performances of the four actors appear to build with them either running cold and internal (Drinda), without pretense (Sattar), with a facsimile of Dionysian inhibition (Weißer), or with a profound expression and communication absent dialogue (Stein). Even as the script slowly lays out the connections between the four little women and their interpersonal dynamics as the push-pull that keeps them tethered, it truly does all come down to the performances that keep us leaning in.
L-R: Lea Drinda as Katharina, Sonja Weißer as Victoria, Safinaz Sattar as Ricky, and Zoe Stein as Malou in THANKS FOR NOTHING. Photo Credit: Schiwago Film. Photo courtesy of SXSW.
We are all the summation of our experiences. The people we’ve loved, the people we wanted to love us; all of our joys, our fears, and everything in between. Of all the things that Markert posits in Thanks for Nothing, the most concrete is that being surrounded by loved ones doesn’t curb a desire to prepare our famous last words, to shed this mortal coil, and to dream no more. Rather, one must make the choice to continue living by finding something that makes the continuous stupidity that comes from breathing worth maintaining, that the value of a life is defined intrinsically and can only be properly cultivated if viewed this way. No single person asks to be born into the chaos of humanity, so to demand that they stay is also a bit of a selfish act, but then, throughout the film, the adults are almost all selfish bastards who see children as something to be handed off once their luster is gone (thanks for nothing, indeed). Markert doesn’t explore this specific notion, but it does come to mind as everyone keeps telling Katharina why she wants to die and she (Katharina) never tells us herself. It’s still a notion worth considering as, with all social conventions, just because this is how they’ve always been done, doesn’t mean that they should be done at all. A little bit of anarchy is good for the soul. So’s a bit of love.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideation (active or passive), help is available to you.
Screening during SXSW Film & TV Festival 2026.
For more information, head to the official SXSW Film & TV Festival Thanks for Nothing webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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