Synopsis
Robert and Elena are twins entangled in a tale of puberty, philosophy and sexuality.
Gröning’s screenplay centers on a brother and sister, Robert and Elena, 19-year-old twins, who spend one summer’s weekend at a petrol station out in the countryside cramming for Elena’s final exam in Philosophy.Read More »
A mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.
Habermann (Czech: Habermannův mlýn) is a 2010 Czech-German-Austrian drama film directed by Juraj Herz. In the story, a German mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.
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The German-Czech-Austrian production “Habermann” is being marketed — with the tagline “War is over; vengeance has begun” — as a look at a corner of history that is little known in America: the expulsion of millions of ethnic German civilians from parts of Europe after World War II. It’s a tricky tale to tell; the film’s opening and closing scenes of Germans in Czechoslovakia being rounded up and loaded onto trains consciously echo the familiar imagery of Jews being sent to Nazi concentration camps.Read More »
German review by Spiegel Online wrote:
Der Autorenfilmstar Christian Petzold, der schon die ‘Kreise’-Episode geschrieben und gedreht hat, hat diesen ‘Polizeiruf’ als so kunst- wie lustvollen Assoziationsstrom in Szene gesetzt. […] Mit romantischem Grimm und grimmscher Romantik zielt […] Petzold aufs kollektive Unterbewusstsein der Zuschauer und arbeitet sich durch alle Facetten des Wolfs-Topos – inklusive einer Ermittlerin, die mit rotem Mantel, vernebeltem Blick und naivem Interesse doch sehr an eine der größten Heldinnen der Gebrüder Grimm erinnert. Dabei bewahrt sich Christian Petzold seinen von aller Gefühlsrhetorik befreiten Stil. In lakonischen Dialogen holt er Angstbilder hoch, die in uns allen schlummern.Read More »
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Shows an independent group of physicians in remote areas of East Africa, and the difficulties they encounter in treating the African patients, who prefer local traditional remedies.Read More »
Christian Petzold’s third episode for the Polizeiruf 110 series, “Tatorte,” starring Matthias Brandt, who has a major cameo in Transit.
Episode description: A woman is executed in a secluded parking lot in front of her daughter. For assistant Nadja and Kriminalhauptkommissar Hanns von Meuffels the case seems obvious: a family drama.Read More »
Hamlet is going crazy. His father has died suddenly of a strange disease, and his mother has married her deceased husband’s brother, of all people, after just one month. Hamlet has nighttime visions of his father, who claims his brother poisoned him, and exhorts Hamlet to take revenge and kill his new stepfather. Hamlet acts the part of the crazy man in order to hide his plans, and loses his grip on reality in the process. The whole world becomes a stagnant swamp to him. Desire and sexuality become a threatening abyss. The friends surrounding him turn out to be spies deployed by his stepfather to keep an eye on him. Read More »
Synopsis:
Thirty years ago, at a scientific conference, Prof. Manfeldt presented his theory on the existence of gold on the Moon. It was greeted with laughter by the assembled academics. Today, Herr Helius has ambitious plans to build a spaceship… and take it to the Moon! Windegger, his chief engineer, will be going, and so will Prof. Manfeldt, now living in a cramped garret alone with his theory. But there are disagreements with the financiers who insist that their man Turner also accompany the flight… The unmanned Rocket H 32 brings back valuable information from the dark side of the Moon. Helius is upset by the news of Windegger’s engagement to the pretty Friede. And the financiers have a secret agenda: to control the world’s gold supply… Finally, the Spaceship “Friede” is ready as it rolls out on its gantry for takeoff. The staged rocket works as planned, but the acceleration is fierce. As they approach the Moon, they discover a stowaway on board, Gustav, a little boy…Read More »
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First off: Fatih Akin’s “The Cut” was an aberration, as we all suspected. The director celebrated for his edgy takes on intriguing characters more or less returns with “In the Fade,” a well-constructed, at times moving story of a Hamburg woman seeking justice after the murder of her Kurdish husband and son by a couple of Neo-Nazis. “More or less” because the excellent first quarter gives way to a relatively standard-issue though handsomely produced legal drama with several stock characters and a script that feels too guided by the presumed requirements of mainstream cinema. Diane Kruger’s powerhouse performance in her first German-language production goes a long way toward compensating for the narrative’s dip into overly crystalline waters, and international sales have been unsurprisingly brisk given the film’s incontrovertible general appeal.Read More »
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The power of co-incidence is explored to dramatic effect in The Edge Of Heaven, a Turkish-German production about two deaths that bring strangers together. Once the opening titles warn us of “Yeter’s Death”, we see Turkish prostitute Yeter meeting an elderly client, Ali, in Germany and watch her fate unfold. Shifting to Turkey and Germany and back again, this spirited, beautifully-acted drama follows both Ali’s son and Yeter’s daughter in the wake of the tragedy.Read More »