The Importance of Being Earnest, Redux: ‘Sad Jokes’ (2024) by Fabian Stumm

“I had a baby with my gay best friend – here’s why it’s the perfect arrangement”, reads a February 2025 lifestyle article in The Telegraph. Comments range from outraged to admiring, reveling in its seemingly radical explosion of the cisheteronormative structure of a family as cis man, cis woman, and gendered child. But multihyphenate Fabian Stumm’s sophomore feature, Sad Jokes (2024), takes this not as a radical move but instead as a given—in which he writes, directs, and stars as gay filmmaker Joseph, who co-parents an adorable young kid named Pino (Justus Meyer) with his clinically depressed best friend, Sonya (Haley Louise Jones). The German filmmaker’s feature debut, Bones and Names (2023), also placed him front and centre as a featured player both behind and in front of the camera, something that seems to also be part of his metacommentary on life (both of his characters, Boris of Bones and Names and Joseph of Sad Jokes, are involved in filmmaking). Having played most recently at the 2025 BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, Sad Jokes originally made its world premiere at 2024 Filmfest München, securing Stumm the prize for Best Director in the German Cinema New Talent programme.

It could be argued that Stumm’s film more or less contains 20 or fewer scenes, excluding its prelude or prologue, in which various individuals tell awkward, cringy “sad jokes” to the camera. The film thus acts more as a set of vignettes that meld together to create one cohesive story. This doesn’t make it any more plotless, but it forces the viewer to think about its contents in a radically different way than other films. In particular, for many characters crucial to Joseph and his journey, we only meet them twice or even once—including ex-boyfriend Marc (Jonas Dassler), with whom he’s been broken up for several years, and nude model Dominik (Knut Berger), which leads to a failed hookup attempt but a scene that ultimately helps us learn more about Joseph himself. In creating unconventional pairings between different characters, Stumm strips away any inklings of cynicism and instead seems to suggest that there are opportunities to create something beautiful between two people, regardless of the relationship. We seem to expect the conventional out of each pairing, but Joseph’s repeatedly earnest explanation that he has a child (yes) with his best friend (yes) while he is gay (also yes) reminds us of the wonders that can come out of the unconventional.

Like his first feature, Sad Jokes is remarkably minimalist in its visuals, sticking to a style of cool tones and plenty of greyscale tons—the similarity can be attributed, in part, to Stumm’s now two-time collaboration with cinematographer Michael Bennett. The writer-director opts for immensely long takes, some reaching nearly 10 minutes in length; by planting a still camera and letting the scenes unfold—or otherwise swapping back and forth between two static cameras focused on two characters—he leans toward the theatrical. In this way, he must also rely heavily on the acting prowess of its lead cast, which measures out its awkward silences with precision rather than unintentionality.

This is the case in the very first scene after the prelude, which is when we first encounter the dynamic between Joseph and Sonya. Sonya has been encouraged to check herself into a mental health facility, which she clearly deigns to remain in, even though she knows it’s for her own good. It’s never clear why she is there, but some interactions suggest some transformation of an extended bout of postpartum depression (she adamantly argues that she would never hurt her child—she is his damn mother, after all). From this film’s opening scene, which places its weight so heavily on the emotional nuance of Sad Jokes standout Jones, the South African-born, Germany-raised, UK actor who can currently be enjoyed in a very different role as the lead in Apple TV+’s gritty take on the medical procedural, Berlin ER (original series title: KRANK Berlin). This is Jones’ moment, and we’ll be very glad to see plenty more of her in both German- and English-language productions.

Stumm’s crowning achievement for Sad Jokes is a mid-film, darkly humourous scene between a sapphic couple greeting a crowd after a film premiere, all the while managing a melodramatic personal fight between themselves. Joseph lingers as a supporting character in the scene, towering over the group and clutching a flute of champagne in one bandaged hand (the reasons behind this can be discovered in an earlier, equally black-comedy scene) while nodding along, trying to pay attention to the discussions happening around him. This scene in and of itself has the sharp wit and complex social dynamics of a short film—and despite us never encountering these characters again, Stumm so precisely alludes to the fickle, emotionally volatile, and confusing nature of relationships, with the relationship between Joseph and Sonya as a case study. A fierce verbal jab can actually be an expression of unconditional love and a fawning compliment can be the worst diss in the world. 

The more Sad Jokes sits with you, the more it grows in expressive meaning as one seeks to connect the thematic dots between the scenes, which are often quite unconnected while loosely still proceeding in a forward-moving narrative. Some moments turn to the more satirical parts of the film, which are primarily played off of Stumm’s character. Joseph recruits the help of his Swedish drawing instructor Elin (stage actor Ulrica Flach) to create a gigantic sculpture of his face, which he intends to use in his next film that he describes as a dark comedy—but frankly, both he and the viewer are not really sure what it is, exactly. The relationship that forms between Elin and Joseph is remarkably touching, and this rises to a fever pitch near the end of the film when the former effectively flies out of nowhere to deliver an overwhelming, heart-stopping Swedish-language soliloquy quoting Joan of Arc. Flach pulls out all the stops to flex her acting muscles, but not once does it feel self-indulgent. Rather, it’s the culmination of blood-rushing emotion embodied in the shy Elin, who says she once wanted to be an actor. Life, says, Stumm, doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to—but by God, it can still be beautiful.