German director-writer Christina Friedrich comes to her birthplace of Nordhausen, a medium-size city of Central Germany, in order to collaborate with the same 33 children as in her 2024 film Zone. She asks them about their deepest fears, dreams, and beliefs, before inviting them to act them out in a natural environment. What follows is less of a straightforward investigation, but a wander through young minds.

The children’s honesty catches you off guard, with large thoughts and questions coming from innocent mouths in a way that no dramatisation could emulate. Lying back, the kids talk about their darkest anxieties, from heights and spiders spinning webs to existential questions about the afterlife. Some of it is sweet and endearing, and other parts deeply gently jarring. To hear one child talk so matter-of-factly about her dissatisfaction with herself, and occasionally wondering if it would be better if she didn’t exist, is a moment that stops you in your tracks. There’s no time to ruminate in this, however, because it’s one of a sea of ponderings that come from minds to young to be filtered.

The film’s rawness can sometimes make it feel elusive. In a medium where audiences crave structure, this opts for a freeform approach. The thoughts are scattered, feeling like 33 separate conversations with young children whose minds flit from one curiosity to the next. This leaves it without a tangible narrative thread to hold on to, although one suspects that’s the point. This is especially evident in some of the fantasy sequences, where children are invited to act out various rituals, dreams, or nightmares, sometimes wearing animal masks. It’s here that the influence of a story from The Brothers Grimm, which Friedrich uses as a base for her work, becomes evident.

These conversations melt into fantasy as the children are invited to confront their feelings, in a way that feels unusually intimate. It’s always led with care and safety, and it becomes something a lot deeper than merely wondering what is on the mind of a group of youngsters. Christine Friedrich’s third feature defies categorisation, and in some ways reviewing, because Friedrich seems as curious about the outcome of her exploration as we are. At its heart, however, it is a window into the limitless joys and terrors of discovering the world at a young age, told by the very people going through that experience.

The Night Is Dark and Colder than the Day just premiered in the 53rd edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.