Mariella und Lilli – Erwachsen geworden ohne Papa

Lilli and Mariella share a special bond. Today, they are young adult women who have gone their separate ways—yet they remain close. Their childhood was anything but ordinary: when they were still in elementary school, their father died after a serious illness. From then on, they had to grow up without him.

“Now, friends and acquaintances are also experiencing similar tragedies,” says 22-year-old Mariella. “I used to always have a special role. I was the girl whose dad had already died.”

KiKA accompanied the sisters eight years ago. At that time, Lilli and Mariella showed how they dealt with their loss – at school, while playing with friends, or in the forest cemetery where their father's urn is buried. You could feel their grief, but also their childlike certainty that their dad was still watching over them from heaven.

Now, eight years later, KiKA meets the two again. How do Lilli and Mariella deal with the absence of their father today? Lilli says that it was only as a young adult that she was able to really come to terms with the loss. Mariella is studying politics, but is also thinking about becoming a funeral director: “The subject of death has been with me my whole life.”

The film interweaves current footage with recordings from the past and shows, on two time levels, how grief changes over the years—and how young people learn to live with such a great loss.

A production by Dokness on behalf of Radio Bremen for KiKA 2025.