Two Performers at Different Stages The stage is the world, or so it appears for Philipp, the busy actor in his prime who shuttles between Hamburg and Vienna in "The Shine of Day." He plays roles in works from "Woyzeck" to "Puss in Boots," and, as embodied by the European stage veteran Philipp Hochmair, he's either running lines at home or immortalizing his latest costume in a photo booth when he's not in front of an audience. Enter Walter, a long-lost uncle who appears one day at Philipp's doorstep. What follows in Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's loose-knit film isn't the expected odd-couple clash - Walter, a circus performer at loose ends, couch-surfs chez Philipp - or fraught family homecoming. It's a chronicle of an encounter between performers at different stations in life, as Walter looks past some of his wistfulness and orneriness and finds a place in his energetic nephew's life. In turn, he pulls the younger, perhaps myopically focused artist into less fictional dramas. These mostly involve Philipp's immigrant neighbor in Vienna, an overburdened contractor and father of two whose mother can't get into the country. That brush with the day-to-day turbulence underlying contemporary Europe, and the presence of Walter Saabel, the unassuming yet rugged circus veteran who plays Philipp's uncle, help mark the film as the work of Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel. A filmmaking team with a past in documentary and an Italian neorealist fondness for theater as a life-embracing allegory, they've brought the impulse to wait and see to this film and to their fiction debut, about an abandoned toddler, "Little Girl (La Pivellina) " (2011). Just as "La Pivellina" coasts somewhat on the drama inherent in featuring a cute lost kid, "The Shine of Day" pulls itself together with an ending that feels a bit ready-made for drawing out the parallels between its kindred performers. But the movie gratifyingly observes the openness that seems the base line for Philipp and Walter, and the glimmer of realization in a stage actor about the void that may lurk among his many liberating roles. This could be something of a cliché too, but the filmmakers recognize that, even as Philipp goes straight back to work under the lights and in front of the eyes of others, he's doing so as a different person than when he last stepped off. The Shine of Day Directed by Rainer Frimmel and Tizza Covi; written by Xaver Bayer, Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel; director of photography, Mr. Frimmel; edited by Emily Artmann and Ms. Covi. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue at Second Street, East Village. In German, with English subtitles. WITH: Philipp Hochmair (Philipp) and Walter Saabel (Walter).