Comedy

Synopsis:
Norman Truscott is a store worker who dreams of stardom. Vernon Carew is a singer whose star is fading. Vernon manages to get a recording of Norman singing and passes it off as himself.Read More »

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Mutters Maske aka Mother’s Mask is a free adaptation of the film Opfergang (1944) aka The Great Sacrifice of Veit Harlan.

Schlingensief exposes his source material’s dangerous proximity to kitsch and camp by reducing the genre conventions known from Harlan, Sirk, Fassbinder & Co to the level of a daily soap: set within a noble family from the German Ruhr, Schlingensief’s story revolving about Willy von Mühlenbeck’s tragic love to terminally ill neighbor girl Äls (Susanne Bredehöft) and the inheritance intrigues by his evil brother Martin von Mühlenbeck (Helge Schneider) creaks with melodramatic devices and self-conscious dialogues. Rather than being a mere spoof, “Mother’s Mask” is perhaps Schlingensief’s purest black comedy.Read More »

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Back Soon is a shift from the serious tone of Solveig Anspach’s previous films to something much more light-hearted. In this off-the-wall comedy, Anna Hallgrimsdottir, in her late thirties, is undergoing an existential crisis. She decides to quit her job, sell her business to the highest bidder, and leave with her two sons… but being a dope dealer, the biggest supplier on the island, complicates things somewhat. Back Soon, an offbeat Scandinavian farce, full of imaginative flights of fancy, reveals a whole new aspect to Solveig Anspach. Following a documentary made in 2001, this is her first fiction feature, a co-production with Iceland, where it was filmed.Read More »

Synopsis
The silent darkness of the bedroom is broken by a greetings message on the answering-machine. A sudden awakening for Chico on his thirtieth birthday. What a mess! Too late to meet his girlfriend, too late for the meeting at Expo ’98, and, even worse, an outsize hangover. But that’s not all. Lying next to him in bed is a young man with whom he has spent the night. He must now pick up the threads of his everyday life. Meanwhile his companion from the night before, with blue eyes and feline body, wanders around the house feeling both curious and amused, with the restless happiness of a twenty-year old with all the time in the world to spare. It is his hunger for life that, in an undeclared game, will transform what could otherwise have been a normal birthday morning for Chico…Read More »

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Achternbuschs zweiter Film
Kurzbeschreibung
Zwei Münchner wollen, von Leben und Liebe ermattet, der quälenden Enge ihrer Heimat entfliehen, indem sie den Atlantik durchschwimmen. Achternbusch erzählt in hintersinnig-vertrackten Bildern und Dialogen von der Utopie eines anderen Lebens und von den Mühlsteinen des deutschen Alltags, die den Helden am Halse hängen – nachdem sprichwörtlich gewordenen Motto: “Du hast keine Chance, aber nutze sie!”Read More »

Synopsis
In Achternbusch’s first feature, an anxious teacher (played, as is the lead role in all his films, by the director) sits in a beer garden on the hill of the Andechs monastery. While flies drown in his mug of beer, he confronts a life of failure: the wife he ignored, the child he neglected, the teaching duties he has shirked, and his doomed efforts at winning tenure from school officials. Only a dream from the past – the memory of a former liaison with a film star with whom he shared “the Andechs feeling, a feeling that we are not alone”, provides sustenance. Despite an unexpected series of events, longing in Achternbusch’s world ultimately remains stronger than fulfillment and thirst better than beer.Read More »

Plot Outline: Clara becomes a secretary who must cater to all the desires of the womanizing writer Jérôme, while he tries to write his memoirs.Read More »

Synopsis:
A Parisian valet loves a woman who rejects him: she’s in debt to open a bookshop, and he’s not her ideal man. A billionaire two-times his wealthy wife with his beautiful mistress, a young supermodel. To draw the paparazzi and his wife off the trail of adultery, and to give his lawyer time to arrange a divorce that won’t cost him a fortune, the billionaire pays the supermodel and the valet to pretend for a month to be a couple. Within days, the bookshop owner and the billionaire are jealous, the supermodel experiences life with a nice guy, and the valet has status and self-confidence. What will each do with newfound wisdom?Read More »

Tahseen loves his girlfriend Mona but her controlling and domineering mother Zareefa is against their marriage and believes her daughter deserves a better suitor than him. When the mother drowns in an unexpected accident, the wedding of Tahseen and Mona takes place shortly after the funeral, and Mona’s father Ashour plans to wed his old time lover Zoba. However, Zareefa’s ghost appears in front of Tahseen who is the only person that can see her as she forces him to divorce Mona at once, but he refuses to do so and her presence causes more problems to the people who thought they were rid of her.Read More »