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I recently completed whatever the column equivalent of a mini-series is with my “Best Overlooked Films Revisited” articles. My goal with those articles was to shed some light on great films that it seems like nobody but me saw, hopefully getting them a little more attention and some more fans. I’ve often considered myself a champion of the little guy (I even rooted for Butler to win the Men’s Basketball NCAA Tourney this year), and when the little guy tends to be way more awesome than the Kraken-sized big guy, then so much the better.

That’s why I’m starting this new series of articles. Now that I’ve caught all of you up on the great overlooked films released since 2004, we can start talking about movies that are currently being released in theaters and on DVD. Hopefully you’ve seen a few of the titles I’ve mentioned between repeat viewings of Clash of the Titans and Date Night, and you realize just how amazing these movies are. Well now you can get the inside scoop on the great movies that aren’t getting talked about on Entertainment Tonight or, really, anywhere else… ever. Until now!

While Date Night took in over $25 million at the box-office this weekend, the film that I was excited about was the German drama Everyone Else, which was surprisingly similar in terms of themes, if wildly different in tone, plot and quality than the Fey/Carrell comedy. Everyone Else also wasn’t quite the hit at the box office that Date Night was, making about $10,000; on the positive side, this did give it a weekend average almost double that of Date Night, an average of about $10,000, as anyone in America who can’t get to the IFC Center has no access to this beautiful, heartbreaking film.

Everyone Else, or AlleAnderen for those pretentious enough to use the film’s German title, is a powerful drama about a dysfunctional marriage (see the connection to Date Night?). Chris and Gitti’s marriage is held together with spit and duct tape; it is abundantly clear that they love each other, but that they are both desperately unhappy with the situation they are in. Chris is an architect, and is assigned a job reconstructing a villa in the Mediterranean, which he uses as a chance to take Gitti on a vacation. Over the course their trip, the tension that has crept into their lives starts bubbling to the surface, and their troubled relationship starts to collapse. Date nights with the blissfully happy Hans and Sana don’t help matters, and before long Chris and Gitti can’t figure out if they want to fix their marriage or just call it quits.

Everyone Else is the second feature from German writer/director Maren Ade, who has proven herself to be a master of minimalist drama. The film runs nearly two hours, but my attention very rarely wandered as I watched the tension build. Despite not giving us any back story on how they met or how long they’ve been together, Ade is able to deliver a perfectly developed relationship to us and then let us watch it dissolve. The fights never come close to melodrama and every scene feels extremely realistic, which is part of what makes this film so depressing. Anybody who has been in a faltering relationship will see a part of themselves in one of the two main characters.

And of course, this film would have been nothing without great performances by its leads. Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger have incredible chemistry, and you never doubt their love for each other whether they are fighting or… whatever else they do together. Yes, there is sex in Everyone Else, but it isn’t sexy as much as it is depressing (I mean that in the best way possible. The sex scenes are as powerful and revealing as any other interaction these characters have). Particularly excellent is Minichmayr, who deservedly won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival. Minichmayr seems to be Germany’s Samantha Morton; an incredibly expressive actress who never overplays an emotion, but whose every facial expression reveals what is going on inside her head. Having also starred in The White Ribbon, I can only hope that Minichmayr will start to get higher profile parts so we can see more of her.

Of course, the easiest way for us to see more of her is for everyone to go out and see the movie she’s in now. Everyone Else is currently playing at the IFC Center, but only for another week or two, which doesn’t give you much time. After that it will be showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival, after which it will presumably be released on DVD someday. Find it. Watch it. It’s not a feel good film; it won’t make you happy about your future relationships the way Date Night will. But it is beautiful and honest, and we could all use a little more honesty and beauty in our lives right now.