This article takes as its starting point the issues surrounding the low prestige accorded to working with cinematic texts in the context of German as a foreign / second language studies. By analysing the German film “Novemberkind” [November Child] (2008), it seeks to highlight how both communicative foreign language teaching and film studies can be mutually reinforcing in cases where cinematic interpretation is understood as a vehicle for the creation of meaning. Film reception with this objective motivates the construction of inter-subjective images and imagination embracing the realities of the lives of the learners. Thus, at the centre of this contribution lie aspects of cinematographic elements in the narrative of a young woman’s search for the roots of her own identity and their impact on the present.