AllMovie

With her gentle and understated drama Vivere, German director Angelina Maccarone weaves the tale of Francesca, a small-town woman who embarks on a fateful trip to the port city of Rotterdam one Christmas Eve. She is searching for younger sister, who left home in pursuit of her musician beau. During her journey, Francesca unexpectedly encounters Gerlinde, a down-and-out elderly woman at the end of her tether. Maccarone cuts in between the stories of the three characters, achronologically, to create a haunting portrait of three disenfranchised, displaced, and isolated women in a state of perpetual flight from their own personal histories.