‘Everything That’s Wrong With You’ review: Two strangers connect online in Ursa Menart’s perceptive comedy-drama

Dir/scr: Ursa Menart. Slovenia/Germany/Serbia. 2026. 96 mins.

It’s generally lonely young men who are portrayed on film looking for an escape from their isolation via the internet. By gender flipping the concept Slovenian filmmaker Ursa Menart gives it a fresh lease of life and a lighter trajectory. While savvy audiences may quickly spot where the arc of her comedy-drama is leading, Everything That’s Wrong With You is invigorated by strong central performances, perceptive observations about why women seek solace online, and an exceptionally cute dog. 

The pair’s individuality is reinforced by Kristina Savic’s savvy costume design

Premiering in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival, after showing in the festival’s Cinelink Works In Progress last year, Everything That’s Wrong With You continues Menart’s scrutiny of younger women’s lives following 2018’s My Last Year As A Loser and should appeal to programmers and audiences looking for female-centric stories with a hopeful sweep. 

Marusa (Anusa Kodelja) is feeling disconnected after losing her mother to cancer. She returned to Slovenia to care for her eight months previously, leaving behind a life in Berlin that has disintegrated in her absence. Packing up the apartment with only her mum’s dachshund Billie (played by 1.5ft-long scene-stealer Baci) for company, she comes across a video from a stranger, Alja (Klara Kuk), while surfing a social network. 

The young woman is in a hospital, talking about the mystery illness she is suffering from and invites her followers, in English, to “confess anything to me, I’m bored”. Marusa, who immediately recognises Alja as a fellow Slovenian, responds on a whim, “I got wasted at my mom’s funeral and went to a party.”

Alja’s sympathetic response offers Marusa the comfort she isn’t encountering elsewhere, especially after she heads for the countryside farm where her remarried father (Matija Vastl) lives with his wife (Mojta Fatur) and Marusa’s teenage half-sister (Kaja Ocvirk). Far from being a retreat from her grief and a place to reconnect with her father, it is a place where old wounds are just itching to be scratched. 

It’s around Christmas time but there’s little cheer in evidence as Menart lets the chilly Slovenian winter cling to Marusa, with cinematographer Roy van Egmond — who has a documentary background — shooting in a relaxed, naturalistic style. Intercut are the videos Marusa and Alja begin swapping, the glow of their phones a bright and warm spot in otherwise lonely lives. 

Marusa’s trip to her dad’s is well-worn cinematic territory but things kick up a gear after she spontaneously decides to pay a visit to her new virtual friend. Pacing issues recur, however, as the film begins to gallop towards its conclusion. After Marusa arrives in the small German beachfront town of Heringsdorf, she is offered a cautious welcome by Alja and an invitation to stay for New Year.

Although Marusa gets the bulk of the character development, Menart crafts two distinctive personalities whose longing for connection hinges on different things. For Marusa, it’s a general dissatisfaction with her life, while the less confident Alja seems to have been living a more pure form of isolation with her online followers giving her the attention she doesn’t get in the offline world. The pair’s individuality is reinforced by Kristina Savic’s savvy costume design, with the dark-haired Marusa favouring darker clothing and rock-chick silver jewellery, while blonde Alja’s wardrobe is full of animal-hooded onesies, pastels and bunny slippers.

The watchful performances from Kodelja and Kuk elevate what comes next as their characters discover that forging a genuine friendship away from carefully curated online personas can be a fraught and revealing business. Billie, meanwhile, is a four-legged master stroke, whether she’s being employed as a comedic witness to the action or functioning as a disruptor or plot driver.