Through the Night

I’d been down a rabbit hole of documentaries—heavy ones, atrocity after atrocity—when I stumbled into this German TV show around midnight. Durch die Nacht, Through the Night, just follows two guys, a rapper named Haftbefehl and comedian Oliver Polak, driving around Offenbach at night. The episode I watched jumped between depression, döner kebab, mothers, carnivals, Jewish history, and Udo Jürgens like it was all part of the same conversation, which I guess it was.

Late-night browsing—whether streets or screens—lands you in strange places. This had that no-thesis quality, just a mood. Two people who clearly know each other, a car, darkness outside, talking the way people actually talk when nobody’s watching. No interview structure, no payoff designed in advance.

What caught me was how human it felt after hours of scrolling through atrocity documentation. Not healing—I’m not naive enough to think döner and banter fix how the world looks. But there was something about it that stuck, some small reminder that people still drive around at night, eat, talk about their mothers, and occasionally make each other laugh.