In his fourth feature, Ted Fendt once again creates a portrait of a set of people linked together by friendship. At its heart is Leonie, who spends a year going through the texts of Anna Maria Ortese. A loose reading group consisting of Florian, Alejo and Hanna joins her in her endeavour. Different seasons and thoughts duly unfold around Berlin’s Chamissoplatz. Fendt shines a spotlight on many small narratives and allows fleeting moments to manifest, captured on 16mm stock at once glowing and matter-of-fact. Florian looks for a flat without success, Alejo has moved from Argentina to Berlin, Hanna is soon to be a mother. Anna Maria Ortese’s books form vanishing points that simultaneously function as an invitation to reflect: Who likes to be led up the garden path by literature? How do realism and fantasy merge? In the meantime, a long conversation between Leonie and Ortese translator Sigrid Vagt becomes the film’s centrepiece, making the mysterious author tangible and spurring Leonie on. <em class="film">Auslandsreise</em> shows a search that takes place in cafés and courtyards, in sentences both spoken and written. Everyday life and literature intertwine. A distillation of life.