Akt
Mario Schneider
Nude models in Leipzig: nudity motivates reflections on injuries and human warmth. A declaration of love to life and bodies that wear their scars with dignity.
D
Film Archive
Credits
Producer
Christoph Kukula
Director
Mario Schneider
Music
Cornelius Renz, Mario Schneider
Cinematographer
Friede Clausz
Editor
Gudrun Steinbrück-Plenert
Script
Mario Schneider
Sound
Johannes Doberenz, Christian Carl, Kai Hesselbarth, Frieder Wohlfarth
After his award winning Mansfeld trilogy Mario Schneider returns to Leipzig with a simply astonishing film. The basic idea is brilliant: on one level, it’s the story of three people who pose nude at the local art academy. This creates a point of intersection from which the film credibly moves in and out of the protagonists’ worlds while linking the work with art with the work of life. At the same time, the scenes where they pose nude invite us to contemplate the human body.
In these moments the stories we just followed – a childhood memory, the beginning of a love story – find surprising physical correspondences that invite us to take a look at ourselves. Another layer is added to this narrative structure, introduced by an art student who poses nude herself and is searching for the artistic expression of an old question: how does human closeness work? Intelligently deployed in the dramaturgy, this subject merges the individual narratives into a social experience that is artist Mario Schneider’s real motif. Multilayered, masterfully edited and timed and sustained by its excellent cinematography, “Naked Beauty” is a declaration of love to the human body that bears its scars with dignity.
Matthias Heeder
In these moments the stories we just followed – a childhood memory, the beginning of a love story – find surprising physical correspondences that invite us to take a look at ourselves. Another layer is added to this narrative structure, introduced by an art student who poses nude herself and is searching for the artistic expression of an old question: how does human closeness work? Intelligently deployed in the dramaturgy, this subject merges the individual narratives into a social experience that is artist Mario Schneider’s real motif. Multilayered, masterfully edited and timed and sustained by its excellent cinematography, “Naked Beauty” is a declaration of love to the human body that bears its scars with dignity.
Matthias Heeder
Alleine Tanzen
Biene Pilavci
Violence, hatred and alienation shaped the lives of this Turkish family in Germany. A very personal account of a failed migration and the attempt to start again.
Alleine Tanzen
Credits
Producer
Max Milhahn, Telekult Film- und Medienproduktion GmbH
Director
Biene Pilavci
Cinematographer
Armin Dierolf
Editor
Biene Pilavci
Script
Biene Pilavci
Sound
Daniel Engel
This sweeping visual investigation was prompted by the question, “After many years of hatred and extreme violence in our family, can my four siblings and I manage to forge sound relationships with other people, even though our parents and their parents before them were unable to?”
Birnur Pilavci deftly manoeuvres between the cliffs of contradictory certainties in her film. On the one hand there is the burden of the family we are born into and whose weight we are forced to carry, on the other hand there is the freedom to make decisions for oneself (or others), not resigned to fate but following one’s own inner compass. Or, as the great German journalist and exiled writer Willy Haas put it: “There are people who do wrong because they were wronged (like everybody). And there are those who do not do wrong, precisely because they were wronged.” The longer you watch it, the more it seems as if “Dancing Alone” wasn’t planned at all but more or less happened to all those involved – an open-ended experiment. “I doubt whether this is a good thing”, says the director, “but I guess it had to happen.”
– Ralph Eue
Birnur Pilavci deftly manoeuvres between the cliffs of contradictory certainties in her film. On the one hand there is the burden of the family we are born into and whose weight we are forced to carry, on the other hand there is the freedom to make decisions for oneself (or others), not resigned to fate but following one’s own inner compass. Or, as the great German journalist and exiled writer Willy Haas put it: “There are people who do wrong because they were wronged (like everybody). And there are those who do not do wrong, precisely because they were wronged.” The longer you watch it, the more it seems as if “Dancing Alone” wasn’t planned at all but more or less happened to all those involved – an open-ended experiment. “I doubt whether this is a good thing”, says the director, “but I guess it had to happen.”
– Ralph Eue
Am Kölnberg
Robin Humboldt, Laurentia Genske
Four residents of Cologne in a prefabricated highrise on the edge of the city. A story of struggles against addiction and poverty, of lives that used to be different. And of friendship and happiness.
Am Kölnberg
Credits
Producer
Kunsthochschule für Medien, Köln
Director
Robin Humboldt, Laurentia Genske
Cinematographer
Laurentia Genske, Robin Humboldt, Johannes Waltermann
Editor
Carina Mergens
Sound
Robert Keilbar
In 1974, a housing estate consisting of nine high-rises was built in the middle of a field on the southern edge of Cologne. Its silhouette, seen from a distance and in the right light, resembles a massive elevation, which soon earned it the name of Kölnberg (Cologne mountain). It also gained a reputation as a deprived area very quickly. People don’t like to talk about Kölnberg, and if they do, it’s usually in lurid headlines. In 2013, 4,100 men, women and children from around 60 nations lived in Kölnberg, the percentage of foreigners was listed as 61.8 %. Statistics are an effective tool and whoever has power over statistical definitions very much shapes our image of reality.
With patience and a lot of time, Filmmakers Robin Humboldt and Laurentia Genske worked their way behind the social stereotypes, headlines and statistics. Their film portrays four people to whom Kölnberg has become a home a long time ago or just recently. They avoid the equally well-meaning and condescending perspective of social services and try to realise a respectful, participatory encounter with the protagonists, who are both extraordinary and extraordinarily diverse in their respective “normalities”.
Ralph Eue
Honorary Mention in the German Competition 2014
With patience and a lot of time, Filmmakers Robin Humboldt and Laurentia Genske worked their way behind the social stereotypes, headlines and statistics. Their film portrays four people to whom Kölnberg has become a home a long time ago or just recently. They avoid the equally well-meaning and condescending perspective of social services and try to realise a respectful, participatory encounter with the protagonists, who are both extraordinary and extraordinarily diverse in their respective “normalities”.
Ralph Eue
Honorary Mention in the German Competition 2014
And Who Taught You to Drive
Andrea Thiele
A German in Mumbai, an American in Tokyo and a Korean in Munich are desperately trying to get their driving licenses. Truly, globalisation has not spread to driving a car yet.
And Who Taught You to Drive
Credits
Producer
Stefan Kloos, Kloos & Co. Medien GmbH
Director
Andrea Thiele
Music
Michaela Kay, Hauke Kliem
Cinematographer
Sebastian Bäumler
Editor
Christoph Senn, Ulf Albert
Script
Lia Jaspers
Sound
Marcial Kuchelmeister
Mirela, a woman in her mid-30s, is standing in a street in the megacity of Mumbai and cursing. Once again the German has booked a car and driver for some business appointments. Once again the car has given out and the driver speaks practically no English. Jake, a US-American, is trying to comprehend the Tokyo public transport system and has squeezed himself and his backpack into one of the crowded subway cars. The student Hye-Won lives in Munich with her husband and little son. The South-Korean dreams of mobility. All three protagonists decide to get a driving license to be able to move freely in their adopted countries.
The filmmakers observe their driving lessons and show everyday scenes in which cultural differences emerge most clearly. Some of the situations with the driving instructors are hilarious, but we also see their desperation and the feeling of being strangers far from home. We may live in a globalised world, but this film demonstrates how deeply we are all marked by our culture and how hard it is to shed it. Preparing for a driving test in a foreign culture seems to be no less difficult than learning a foreign language. No doubt about it, globalisation has not spread to driving a car.
– Antje Stamer
The filmmakers observe their driving lessons and show everyday scenes in which cultural differences emerge most clearly. Some of the situations with the driving instructors are hilarious, but we also see their desperation and the feeling of being strangers far from home. We may live in a globalised world, but this film demonstrates how deeply we are all marked by our culture and how hard it is to shed it. Preparing for a driving test in a foreign culture seems to be no less difficult than learning a foreign language. No doubt about it, globalisation has not spread to driving a car.
– Antje Stamer
Art War
Marco Wilms
Art as a weapon! Graffiti on Cairo’s walls as a medium of rebellion, Egyptian underground artists as the chroniclers of events. A frenzied trip through colours and rhythms.
Art War
Documentary Film
Germany
2013
87 minutes
Subtitles:
German
English
Credits
Producer
Marlen Burghardt, Marco Wilms
Director
Marco Wilms
Music
Ramy Essam, Bosaina and Wetrobots, Tonbüro Berlin
Cinematographer
Marco Wilms, Abdelrhman Zin Eldin, Emanuele Ira, Bashir Mohamed Wagih, Ali Khaled
Editor
Stephan Talneau
Animation
Mohamed Khaled
Script
Marco Wilms
Art is a weapon! This motto still holds true in Cairo. After 30 years of autocracy, President Mubarak was swept away by his people. Now the street belongs to them, the young rebels and artists. Graffiti sprayers and painters make the walls speak. They recount the days of fighting in blood-smeared portraits, the time of anarchy in wild collages, the attempts of liberation from a suppressed sexuality in obscene pictures. Walls become a chronicle of the rush of events; electro pop and rap supply a thrilling soundtrack. Euphoria is followed by overpainting and destruction. Snipers are at work, aiming at the protesters’ eyes. The revolution is no more romantic than this underground art, whose aim is to provoke and take risks, is accommodating.
In one episode, director Marco Wilms draws a line back to the historic murals of the age of the Pharaohs. In a country with a high illiteracy rate, such traditions become a tried and tested medium of revolt. In a wild tour de force through the past two years of permanent and radical upheavals, “Art War” shows the dangerous dance on the volcano as a trip driven forward by the colours and rhythms of the Egyptian painters and musicians.
Cornelia Klauß
Honorary Mention in the German Competition Documentary Film 2013
In one episode, director Marco Wilms draws a line back to the historic murals of the age of the Pharaohs. In a country with a high illiteracy rate, such traditions become a tried and tested medium of revolt. In a wild tour de force through the past two years of permanent and radical upheavals, “Art War” shows the dangerous dance on the volcano as a trip driven forward by the colours and rhythms of the Egyptian painters and musicians.
Cornelia Klauß
Honorary Mention in the German Competition Documentary Film 2013
Atl Tlachinolli
Alexander Hick
Mexico City, a juggernaut of millions of inhabitants, fighting for survival. Its counterpoint is the mythical Axolotl, which does not undergo any metamorphosis but is losing its biotope. A bold portrait of a city.
Atl Tlachinolli
Documentary Film
Germany,
Mexico
2015
76 minutes
Subtitles:
German
Credits
Producer
University for Television and Films Munich, Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, A.C.
Director
Alexander Hick
Music
Juan Pablo Villa
Cinematographer
Alexander Hick
Editor
Julian Sarmiento
Script
Alexander Hick, Ileana Villareal
You don’t have to be a zoologist to understand Alexander Hick’s fascination with an animal singularly adapted to the formation of myths. The axolotl, a caudate, refuses to metamorphose. It will not go ashore but prefers to remain in the water as a larva and still manages to breed and regrow limbs. Even its heart and brain regenerate! The only problem is that its habitat has vanished. An 8-million metropolis is now rising where there used to be water: Mexico City. Alexander Hick asks how humans treat the conquered paradise through insistent images full of cultural historical, religious and mythological references. In fragmented parallel episodes he sketches the inhabitants of this megacity and their struggle for survival. Violence and corruption have hollowed out everything: the family, the institutions, the state. The film does not give us any faith in their self-“regeneration”. On the contrary.
So the axolotl, worshipped by the Aztecs, is the last witness of an oppressed and abused landscape and an age when humans were still capable of building advanced civilisations. An intelligent – in the noblest sense of the word – essay film, and the bold portrait of a city.
Cornelia Klauß
So the axolotl, worshipped by the Aztecs, is the last witness of an oppressed and abused landscape and an age when humans were still capable of building advanced civilisations. An intelligent – in the noblest sense of the word – essay film, and the bold portrait of a city.
Cornelia Klauß
Breathing Earth - Susumu Shingu's Dream
Thomas Riedelsheimer
Shingu Susumu, the Japanese creator of kinetic sculptures, and his attempts to realise his “Breathing Earth” project. The power of the elements transferred to art and film.
Breathing Earth - Susumu Shingu's Dream
Credits
Producer
Stefan Tolz, Filmpunkt GmbH, Leslie Hills, Skyline Productions
Director
Thomas Riedelsheimer
“There’s no such thing as rigid resistance in nature”, says Shingu Susumu, a Japanese creator of kinetic sculptures in the tradition of Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely. For many years, Shingu has explored the energies of wind and water as an artist. As a seismographer of the state of our world he designs sculptures that face up to the forces of nature, absorb them and are transformed by them. Making the power of the elements visible is his credo. In "Breathing Earth - Susumu Shingu's Dream", Thomas Riedelsheimer accompanies the artist on a worldwide search for a suitable location where an interdisciplinary project initiated by him and called “Breathing Earth” could become reality: a community fuelled only by the natural energy of wind, water and the sun, serving as a place of inspiration for artists, scientists and children and thus becoming a prototypical future laboratory.
– Ralph Eue
– Ralph Eue
Café Waldluft
Matthias Koßmehl
Now that the Italian tourists no longer come refugees live in this hotel in the idyllic Bavarian Alps. Their lives intersect, sometimes as comedy, sometimes as tragedy. A different kind of “Heimatfilm”.
Café Waldluft
Documentary Film
Germany
2015
79 minutes
Subtitles:
German
Credits
Producer
Matthias Koßmehl
Director
Matthias Koßmehl
Music
André Feldhaus
Cinematographer
Bastian Esser
Editor
Andreas Nicolai
Script
Matthias Koßmehl
Sound
Till Wollenweber
Tourists used to come by the busload for their place in the sun at the beautiful Café Waldluft, at least during their well-earned holidays. For the past two years, though, the long-established hotel in Berchtesgaden with its view of the “fateful mountain” of the Germans, the Watzmann and its foothills, has accommodated guests from other regions of the world: they came from Syria, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone and have certainly not chosen this alpine idyll freely. Their stay as asylum seekers consists of endless waiting, tiring visits to administrative offices, being homesick and worrying about relatives.
The dynamics in the small town have also changed. But if Matthias Koßmehl opens his film with a traditional Bavarian costume parade in slow motion his only motive is to eliminate the expectations raised by this stereotype. Instead he takes a sober but open-hearted look at the encounters that actually happen in this strange place. There is Mama Flora, the owner, who trusts in God and takes care of each of her protégés, and there is the East German cook who has found her elective home here. Chance encounters with regulars or hikers and the everyday coexistence at the house match a whole range of intersecting lives. The Watzmann, covered in clouds or clearly visible, is always on the horizon. A documentary “Heimatfilm” in which the term home has many facets.
Lars Meyer
Award winner of the DEFA Sponsoring Prize 2015
The dynamics in the small town have also changed. But if Matthias Koßmehl opens his film with a traditional Bavarian costume parade in slow motion his only motive is to eliminate the expectations raised by this stereotype. Instead he takes a sober but open-hearted look at the encounters that actually happen in this strange place. There is Mama Flora, the owner, who trusts in God and takes care of each of her protégés, and there is the East German cook who has found her elective home here. Chance encounters with regulars or hikers and the everyday coexistence at the house match a whole range of intersecting lives. The Watzmann, covered in clouds or clearly visible, is always on the horizon. A documentary “Heimatfilm” in which the term home has many facets.
Lars Meyer
Award winner of the DEFA Sponsoring Prize 2015
Camp 14 - Total Control Zone
Marc Wiese
A childhood and youth spent in a North Korean internment camp, surrounded by terror and death, and the attempt to build a life after that – a moving biography, intensely narrated.
Camp 14 - Total Control Zone
Credits
Producer
Axel Engstfeld
Director
Marc Wiese
Cinematographer
Jörg Adams
Editor
Jean-Marc Lesguillons
Animation
cartoonamoon / Ali Soozandeh
Script
Marc Wiese
Shin Dong-Hyuk was born in one of the toughest prison camps of North Korea in 1983 and grew up there. All he knew was the hell of the camp. He only learned of the world on the other side of the barbed wire when a fellow prisoner told him about his life before detention. Shin decided to escape – but it wasn’t freedom he wanted, because he didn’t even know what that was. He wanted to eat his fill just once, even at the risk of being shot afterwards. At the age of 22, Shin successfully escaped.
Today he lives alone in a small flat in South Korea, where Shin recounts his life in the penal colony in very intense interviews, his traumatisation obvious. But the director goes one step further by not limiting himself to the victim’s point of view. He also brings two perpetrators in front of his camera, people who tormented, tortured and killed. To illustrate life in the camp, he uses delicately drawn, restrained animations and original material. The quiet flow of the narrative and the unobtrusive but atmospheric soundtrack allow the protagonists and their stories the space they need. Gradually the inconceivable is taking shape, for even today 200 000 people in North Korea are living in internment camps.
– Antje Stamer
Today he lives alone in a small flat in South Korea, where Shin recounts his life in the penal colony in very intense interviews, his traumatisation obvious. But the director goes one step further by not limiting himself to the victim’s point of view. He also brings two perpetrators in front of his camera, people who tormented, tortured and killed. To illustrate life in the camp, he uses delicately drawn, restrained animations and original material. The quiet flow of the narrative and the unobtrusive but atmospheric soundtrack allow the protagonists and their stories the space they need. Gradually the inconceivable is taking shape, for even today 200 000 people in North Korea are living in internment camps.
– Antje Stamer
Caracas
Maximilian Feldmann
The chronicle of a psychological disorder, told by relatives and friends. The formally rigorous portrait of a family and a society in which everyone has to function.
Credits
Producer
Jana Beyer
Director
Maximilian Feldmann
Music
Marcel Walter
Cinematographer
Luise Schröder
Editor
Anne Goldenbaum
Script
Maximilian Feldmann
Sound
Dominik Leube
The distance between Germany and Caracas is about 8,000 kilometres as the crow flies. At first glance, this seems enough to forget everything that might sicken the human soul in our part of the world. Even if he doesn’t remember exactly why, Maximilian Feldmann was there, as proven by the few pertinent shots in his film. As for the rest, he decided to find his interlocutors in his home country of Germany and confront them only with the cause of his journey. To this end, he places them in slightly “crazy” frames. “We didn’t think it was an illness for a long time”, a lady says directly into the camera. Another man talks about authenticity as the theme of life. The film only gradually reveals the true identity of these people, to whom you feel surprisingly close, through the way they deal with a disorder. Taking a very personal problem as the point of departure, a formally stringent, in fact authentic portrait of a family emerges and, beyond that, a haunting image of our society. That was definitely worth the journey.
Claudia Lehmann
Claudia Lehmann
Coming off the Real Time, for a While
Anna Friedrich
On the Swedish coast, the farmer Sven Axel lives with his mother, a few animals and a lot of imagination. He dreams of filmmaking and acting. Now he tries out both.
Coming off the Real Time, for a While
Documentary Film
Germany
2019
62 minutes
Subtitles:
English
German
Credits
Producer
Anna Friedrich, Ray Peter Maletzki (ROSENPICTURES)
Director
Anna Friedrich
Music
Stef Ketteringham
Cinematographer
Anna Friedrich
Editor
Anna Friedrich
Script
Anna Friedrich
Sound
Andrea Rüthel, André Görbing, Leo Rocker, Maximilian Glaß, Anna Friedrich
Anna Friedrich follows Sven Axel Nilsson into the morning fog. Sven Axel works as a farmer somewhere in Sweden, the sea nearby. But he is much more than that. Friedrich teases it out of him by asking him about his dreams and fears, by wanting to know which of the four elements is his favourite. She hands him the camera because he wants to film stones, so a short but no less spectacular contribution about a mystical rock formation becomes part of this unconventional portrait. But Sven Axel also likes acting and so, without further ado, he becomes this, too: an actor.
Far away from almost any disturbance, the two begin a kind of game in which both Sven Axel’s mother and an area used by the Swedish army for exercises play roles. “For me the world is a quite big globe. ’Cause I haven’t travelled so much in my life,” he says. And adds: “Now, the wide, wide world seems very small. But it’s not true. If you sail, or you’re walking or you ride, it’s quite a big world, it is.” In any case, Sven Axel’s world is an extremely rich one. Anna Friedrich makes it negotiable.
Carolin Weidner
Far away from almost any disturbance, the two begin a kind of game in which both Sven Axel’s mother and an area used by the Swedish army for exercises play roles. “For me the world is a quite big globe. ’Cause I haven’t travelled so much in my life,” he says. And adds: “Now, the wide, wide world seems very small. But it’s not true. If you sail, or you’re walking or you ride, it’s quite a big world, it is.” In any case, Sven Axel’s world is an extremely rich one. Anna Friedrich makes it negotiable.
Carolin Weidner
Das kalte Eisen
Thomas Lauterbach
Weapons in Germany: riflemen and collectors, the parents of the Winnenden victims, a gunsmith with a sense of professional honour. A multi-faceted examination of guilt and responsibility.
Das kalte Eisen
Credits
Producer
Florian Fickel
Director
Thomas Lauterbach
Music
Christian Biegai
Cinematographer
Gunther Merz
Editor
Ana R. Fernandes
Script
Thomas Lauterbach
Sound
Thomas Lauterbach
The volume of arms seized or turned in and annually destroyed by Baden-Württemberg’s arms disposal service is said to be measured in tons. It’s a measure taken to minimize violence, or at least “opportunity” – such as the one taken by a 17-year-old boy in March 2009 when he took his father’s gun to his former school and killed 15 people. Jana Schober and Nina Denise Mayer were among the victims. Jana’s father and Nina’s mother have been actively working to support the destruction of firearms ever since. The amateur shooters, hunters and gun collectors, though, are rather sceptical, sometimes even angry, about this so-called “review of Winnenden”. And then there is the local gunsmith, who makes excellent precision firearms and suffers because nowadays, as he says, his profession is more despised than a prostitute’s. Thomas Lauterbach takes a close look at the personal concerns of his protagonists, giving us extraordinary insights into the different perspectives on the issue. His film examines very diverse facets of the question of guilt and responsibility. But above all, he finds astonishing ways to shake up a specific view of life.
Claudia Lehmann
Claudia Lehmann
Das Venedig Prinzip
Andreas Pichler
About the last residents of a Venice reduced to a Disneyland for cruise ship tourists. Scary images of a city turned capitalist nightmare.
Das Venedig Prinzip
Documentary Film
Germany,
Italy,
Austria
2012
80 minutes
Subtitles:
German
Credits
Producer
Thomas Tielsch, Filmtank GmbH
Director
Andreas Pichler
Music
Jan Tilman Schade
Cinematographer
Attila Boa
Editor
Florian Miosge
Script
Andreas Pichler, Thomas Tielsch
Sound
Stefano Bernardi
It’s hard to find a more popular city than Venice. But what is a dream for many people has become a nightmare for the residents. This film shows cruise ships and coaches spilling their loads of tourists at the banks of the old town, from which they flood squares, bridges and alleys. The tourists may bring money – especially for the big corporations -, but they are also the curse of this city.
This film follows a few residents, perhaps the last of their kind, through their Venice. They show an infrastructure on the verge of collapse. Food stores are rare; schools and post offices have closed, replaced by ever more hotels and piers for huge cruise ships. “What can you do?” a Venetian woman asks resignedly. “Sell glassware and souvenirs?” She too rents out her house to pay for its refurbishment. Another born Venetian is forced to move to the mainland because he can’t afford the rent. Only foreigners and rich Italians can pay the expensive prices per square meter, an embittered real estate agent concludes. Only 60000 residents still live in the historic city centre today. The same number of people visit the city every day. Venice is degenerating into an open air museum. The film takes a sobering look behind the picture postcard idylls of Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square.
– Antje Stamer
This film follows a few residents, perhaps the last of their kind, through their Venice. They show an infrastructure on the verge of collapse. Food stores are rare; schools and post offices have closed, replaced by ever more hotels and piers for huge cruise ships. “What can you do?” a Venetian woman asks resignedly. “Sell glassware and souvenirs?” She too rents out her house to pay for its refurbishment. Another born Venetian is forced to move to the mainland because he can’t afford the rent. Only foreigners and rich Italians can pay the expensive prices per square meter, an embittered real estate agent concludes. Only 60000 residents still live in the historic city centre today. The same number of people visit the city every day. Venice is degenerating into an open air museum. The film takes a sobering look behind the picture postcard idylls of Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square.
– Antje Stamer
Der Esel hieß Geronimo
Arjun Talwar, Bigna Tomschin
The island was a shared dream that failed. Now all its former inhabitants are bobbing up and down in the harbour on their little boats, mourning, scolding, analysing mistakes.
Der Esel hieß Geronimo
Documentary Film
Germany,
Switzerland
2018
80 minutes
Subtitles:
English
German
Credits
Producer
Arjun Talwar (Lo-Fi Films)
Director
Arjun Talwar, Bigna Tomschin
Cinematographer
Arjun Talwar
Editor
Bigna Tomschin
Script
Arjun Talwar, Bigna Tomschin
Sound
Franek Kosłowski
“An island always has two sides. One is summer, the other is winter,” a man called Rüdiger says. A fact that makes life on the island more difficult, because farming and surviving are much harder in winter. Other obstacles of living together: the famous “island rage” which is probably found all over the world in every latitude and longitude.
The residents of Store Okseø in the Baltic Sea managed to withstand all this adversity for more than ten years. Then they quarrelled and left the island, almost all of them with a broken heart. Nobody got over this place and what happened there. The island is a subject of conversation, a niggling gap, a throbbing wound. There seems to have been a donkey called Geronimo there, but also countless varieties of roses, coffee and beer for all visitors, music, events, a shared dream. A fixed point in the ocean. Without it, the sailors would have lost their ground, a friend believes. And it’s true, they are all lying at anchor in their small boats now, rocking, drinking, scolding and spying on each other, and thinking.
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
The residents of Store Okseø in the Baltic Sea managed to withstand all this adversity for more than ten years. Then they quarrelled and left the island, almost all of them with a broken heart. Nobody got over this place and what happened there. The island is a subject of conversation, a niggling gap, a throbbing wound. There seems to have been a donkey called Geronimo there, but also countless varieties of roses, coffee and beer for all visitors, music, events, a shared dream. A fixed point in the ocean. Without it, the sailors would have lost their ground, a friend believes. And it’s true, they are all lying at anchor in their small boats now, rocking, drinking, scolding and spying on each other, and thinking.
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
Der Funktionär
Andreas Goldstein
A “Film about the Father”, the GDR functionary Klaus Gysi. And a film about a state often associated with injustice. Not here: the good communist is a tragic figure.
Der Funktionär
Credits
Producer
Andreas Goldstein, Heino Deckert
Director
Andreas Goldstein
Cinematographer
Jakobine Motz
Editor
Chris Wright
Script
Andreas Goldstein
The “Film about the Father” is a difficult genre. Andreas Goldstein, son of the GDR cultural functionary Klaus Gysi (1912–1999) has tackled this task with a complete lack of vanity, but with insistence: measured and calm, honest and intellectual, analytical and personal. He uncovers a mosaic that renounces both the teleologies of the self-styled winners of history and the simplifications of (West) German Oscar nominees. This film is not about the lives of others, but about his own life. Not about yesterday, about today, too.
The focus is on the father and his lifelong ambition to found a social order in which “spirit and power are in complete agreement”. It’s on the primal scene of the Jewish intellectual (the sight of a dead worker), the career of an SED Party communist (head of a publishing house, cultural minister, ambassador, state secretary for church matters), insights into a driven private life. Part of this “communist genealogy” himself, Goldstein comments own photos, found television material and images from Berlin (then, today) from offscreen, setting a high standard for a re-evaluation of the state that will always be his origin: “We would reject questions about the legitimacy of our present existence. How come we ask them about the past all the time?”
Barbara Wurm
The focus is on the father and his lifelong ambition to found a social order in which “spirit and power are in complete agreement”. It’s on the primal scene of the Jewish intellectual (the sight of a dead worker), the career of an SED Party communist (head of a publishing house, cultural minister, ambassador, state secretary for church matters), insights into a driven private life. Part of this “communist genealogy” himself, Goldstein comments own photos, found television material and images from Berlin (then, today) from offscreen, setting a high standard for a re-evaluation of the state that will always be his origin: “We would reject questions about the legitimacy of our present existence. How come we ask them about the past all the time?”
Barbara Wurm
Der Kuaför aus der Keupstraße
Andreas Maus
The NSU nail bomb attack that injured 22 people in Cologne in 2004, where only the victims were suspected later. Complex reconstruction of a scandal.
Der Kuaför aus der Keupstraße
Credits
Producer
Herbert Schwering, Christine Kiauk
Director
Andreas Maus
Music
Maciej Sledziecki
Cinematographer
Hajo Schomerus
Editor
Rolf Mertler
Script
Maik Baumgärtner, Andreas Maus
Sound
Ralf Weber
Wednesday afternoon was deliberately chosen. There were a lot of customers in front of and in the brothers Özcan and Hasan Yildirim’s barbershop on 9 June 2004, when 700 three-inch carpenters’ nails turned into projectiles with a 250 metre range. 22 people were injured. The attack was infamous; the course of the investigations was equally scandalous: the victims were suspected. CCTV material was not analysed and Federal Minister of the Interior Otto Schily decisively ruled out a right wing background. It was only in 2001 that this crime was solved in the course of the revelations concerning the right wing extremist terrorist “National Socialist Underground” group. The trial continues until the present day.
Ten years after the Cologne nail bomb attack, director Andreas Maus focuses on giving a voice to those whom nobody wanted to hear for a long time. He deploys narrative strategies to establish a distance in order to expose how systematically matters were hushed up, suppressed and denied. Documentary and re-enacted material are interwoven, actors perform next to affected persons, spaces are reconstructed. Maus overwrites the hackneyed televised images with his own visual inventions. The camera stops, the look at the audience freezes. One is tempted to ask what exactly is supposed to come after the “culture of welcome”?
Cornelia Klauß
Ten years after the Cologne nail bomb attack, director Andreas Maus focuses on giving a voice to those whom nobody wanted to hear for a long time. He deploys narrative strategies to establish a distance in order to expose how systematically matters were hushed up, suppressed and denied. Documentary and re-enacted material are interwoven, actors perform next to affected persons, spaces are reconstructed. Maus overwrites the hackneyed televised images with his own visual inventions. The camera stops, the look at the audience freezes. One is tempted to ask what exactly is supposed to come after the “culture of welcome”?
Cornelia Klauß
