I Spy With My Little Eye
Two friends, one funeral, and a question nobody can answer
I Spy With My Little Eye opens with the wreckage already everywhere. Yalda and Lou are clearing out their childhood best friend Solveigh's apartment—except Solveigh is dead by her own hand, and her five-year-old daughter is still alive, still needs someone, and neither Yalda nor Lou quite agrees on who that should be. This 95-minute German drama, which premiered at Tribeca 2026 in the International Narrative Competition, isn't interested in easy answers. It sits in the silence instead. The custody question becomes the framework, but what's really happening is an excavation of a friendship that stretched across decades—carrying all the love, yes, but also the jealousy, the distance, all the things that were never quite said.
Not comfortable. Necessary.
Director Alisa Kolosova makes her feature debut here, and it's the kind of bow that makes you sit up. Writer Judith Rose Gyabaah built the screenplay around dialogue that doesn't explain what people feel; it circles around it, the way people actually talk when they're grieving and a little bit angry at someone they're not allowed to be angry at anymore. The cast—Saskia Rosendahl, Svenja Jung, Soma Pysall, and Meret Becker—doesn't lean on dramatic confrontation. The grief lives in silences, in how they handle Solveigh's objects, in arguments that start about practical things and end somewhere much older.
Why the performances land so quietly
What's striking is that there's a scene early on where Yalda and Lou sit in Solveigh's kitchen, not quite able to look at each other, and the weight of how did we miss this? fills the room without a single line of dialogue addressing it directly. That takes confidence. Rosendahl, in particular, has built a reputation across European cinema for restraint—the kind of performance where you feel what's happening beneath the surface rather than being told about it. Jung matches her. Neither pushes.
Filmuforia's festival review praised the film's "emotionally precise handling of grief," while the Alliance of Women Film Journalists called it "equal parts charming and intimately beautiful"—which captures something real about the tonal range. It isn't relentlessly bleak. There are moments of warmth, even humor, that feel earned. Kolosova frames the whole thing as a love letter to female solidarity, and she means it—the way she builds the texture of this three-way friendship, the way she holds all three women with equal weight even though one of them is gone. That restraint matters.
The film's festival journey and where it stands now
The 2026 Tribeca Festival selection marked Kolosova's international feature debut (though apparently she'd worked in German television for years before this). International sales are being handled by Epsilon Film, which means a wider theatrical release is actively being pursued, though as of this writing no confirmed distribution deal for general audiences has been locked. Hard to say if that changes by year's end, but festival momentum is real.
According to Filmuforia's Tribeca coverage, the film played to strong notices from critics—the kind of quiet-but-serious reception that tends to accelerate international deals. No MPAA rating has been publicly assigned yet (typical for films still working through distribution), and aggregator scores on Rotten Tomatoes or Letterboxd haven't accumulated to the point of being meaningful data. What we have instead is a string of festival reviews telling a consistent story: this is a film that trusts its audience.
Where to watch right now
The film is currently available on major OTT services following its festival run—exact platforms vary by region. Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker has live, region-specific availability, which matters because international rights are still being finalized. Streaming availability for festival films can shift quickly depending on territory and distribution deals, so that widget is your best real-time source rather than hunting it down manually.
If the film isn't yet on a platform in your country, it's worth checking back. The combination of Tribeca buzz and a cast with serious European credits tends to accelerate deals—especially for a title this intimate. Movie OTT also covers comparable titles in the European drama space if you're building a watchlist around character-driven work that doesn't need explosions or romantic resolution to justify its runtime.
Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Year: 2026
Directed by: Alisa Kolosova (feature debut)
Written by: Judith Rose Gyabaah
Starring: Saskia Rosendahl, Svenja Jung, Soma Pysall, Meret Becker
Rating: Not yet assigned (international film)
Who should actually watch this
If you've ever had a friendship that held more history than it could comfortably carry—this one's for you. I Spy With My Little Eye doesn't judge its characters, doesn't offer tidy resolution, doesn't let anyone fully off the hook. Viewers who found themselves moved by quiet European dramas centered on women's interior lives—think Barbara, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, that lane—will find something genuinely special here. It's the kind of film that lingers after you've stopped watching. The kind you'll think about in the shower three days later.
Start with the where-to-watch widget above to check current availability in your region. That's the clearest path forward.