‘Foreign Travel’ Review: Ted Fendt’s Elegant Literary Odyssey

In Foreign Travel, the new German film by American director Ted Fendt, two parallel worlds coexist. One unfolds in Berlin, specifically around Chamissoplatz in Kreuzberg. The other exists in the fiction of Italian writer Anna Maria Ortese, whose books occupy the minds of at least three of the film’s protagonists over the course of a year. Running just over an hour, Foreign Travel is built out of meetings, missed connections, and conversations centered less on plot than on the books its characters are reading —and the worlds those books gradually open up.

Much like the film itself, Ortese’s work proves difficult to pin down. As Leonie —the character most devoted to her writing, played by co-writer Leonie Rodrian— explains, Ortese remains misunderstood by many readers. Undeterred, Leonie enthusiastically introduces her books to friends, whether in Italian, German, or French. Her circle includes Alejo (Alejo Franzetti, the Argentine filmmaker who, both in life and in the film, now lives in Berlin), their pregnant friend Hanna (Hanna Döring), and Florian (Florian Model), a newcomer to the city struggling to find a place to live.

Much of Foreign Travel consists of readings and discussions of the author of Il porto di Toledo, Poveri e semplici, and L’Iguana, who died in 1998. Those conversations become the film’s true «foreign travels.» Through Ortese’s work, the characters journey —if only imaginatively— to Naples, Sicily, and Milan. Their exchanges range from disagreements over her writing —Alejo is captivated by it, while Florian remains unconvinced— to a fascinating conversation between Leonie and Ortese’s translator, who describes the author, among other things, as an eco-feminist.

It’s easy to feel somewhat adrift amid these literary references. Although the film quotes extensively from Ortese’s work, its rhythms leave little time for newcomers to fully absorb the texts. Yet what remains unmistakable is the transformative effect her writing has had on Leonie. As she prepares for a trip to Italy to follow in Ortese’s footsteps, the other characters begin tracing their own personal journeys. Florian reflects on his housing difficulties, his hometown, and his uncertainty about whether to stay there and continue his studies or build a new life in Berlin. Alejo recounts his move from Buenos Aires in search of «somewhere greener» and reflects on the history of Italian immigration to Argentina, of which his own family was a part.

As Germans travel to Italy, Italians emigrate to Argentina, and Argentines relocate to Germany, the film’s conversations and quiet wanderings through Kreuzberg begin to intertwine. Fendt, whose Classical Period explored similar territory, films the streets surrounding Chamissoplatz on 16mm with understated lyricism, lingering on storefronts, cafés, and street corners. These images blend seamlessly with the friends’ conversations, resulting in a small but remarkably elegant film whose literary ambitions recall the work of Matías Piñeiro—unsurprising, given that Franzetti has collaborated with him. In more ways than one, Foreign Travel becomes a celebration of reading and of the way passionate readers allow literature to reshape how they see both the world and their own lives.