Germany

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Like all of Fassbinder’s best films, Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven is many things at once. It is simultaneously a deeply compassionate portrait of a working-class woman and a scathing satire of her exploitation; emotionally rich but politically and intellectually dense, filled with arguments and counter-arguments galore; psychologically astute yet highly stylized and visually lush. It is a comedy, a drama, and much more. It is also an excellent example of how Fassbinder uses image and sound, often in subtle ways, to develop – and play with – his themes.Read More »

A successful fashion designer abandons a sado-masochistic relationship with her female assistant in favor of a love affair with a beautiful young woman.Read More »

Asian warriors take a group of Western women hostage and bring them to their all-female village, leading to a culture clash.

Women Make Movies wrote:

Ulrike Ottinger’s epic adventure traces a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven western women travelers meet aboard the sumptuous, meticulously reconstructed Trans-Siberian Express, a rolling museum of European culture. Lady Windemere, an elegant ethnographer played by the incomparable Delphine Seyrig in her last screen role, regales a young companion with Mongol myths and lore while other passengers-a prim tourist (Irm Hermann), a brash Broadway chanteuse and an all-girl klezmer trio-revel in campy dining car cabaret. Suddenly ambushed by a band of Mongol horsewomen, the company is abducted to the plains of Inner Mongolia and embark on a fantastic camel ride across the magnificent countryside. Breathtaking vistas, the lavish costumes of Princess Ulun Iga and her retinue, and the rituals of Mongol life are stunningly rendered by Ottinger’s cinematography. Dubbed a female Lawrence of Arabia and just as sweepingly romantic, JOHANNA D’ARC OF MONGOLIA is a grandly entertaining, unforgettable journey.Read More »

Article: from ~ by James Steffen
Immanuel Rath is a stuffy, disciplinarian professor who is shocked to discover his students passing around a postcard of Lola-Lola, a singer at The Blue Angel cabaret. Hoping to catch his students there, Professor Rath visits the nightclub and witnesses Lola-Lola’s performance. Entranced by her dissolute charms, he gets drunk on champagne and spends the night with her. The ensuing scandal causes him to lose control of his students and he is terminated from his position. Returning to Lola, he agrees to marry her and joins the troupe. His humiliation at having to play a clown onstage is compounded by Lola’s attraction to the strongman Mazeppa. To make matters worse, the troupe returns to the professor’s hometown, forcing him to acknowledge how far he has fallen.Read More »

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One of the many films drawing a connection between Christmas and war. It is unclear whether the longing for a white Christmas is being taken seriously, or whether it is intended as a denunciation. In either event, America’s war in Vietnam is denounced.

(Harun Farocki)Read More »

Veteran film director Matty Bonkers (Bob Rafelson), a Hollywood legend, arrives in Berlin or an honorary retrospective tribute. While introducing his film MOCKERY, he receives a phone call from his producer lying in intensive care at a hospital. Blau (Trevor Griffiths) needs a favor for old times’ sake. Could Matty finish a porn movie before his legs get broken by Tokyo Tony? Matty reluctantly agrees. On the set he meets movie star and ex-cello-player Inga (Fabienne Babe) – and the experience is bizarre spirited uplifting a comédie humaine. PORN.com features Bob Rafelson in his first major acting role.Read More »

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The author Max Zorn, now in his early 60s, is on a promotional book tour in New York when he meets up again with the woman he could never forget. They spend a weekend together. 17 years have passed. Can there be a future for their past?Read More »

On behalf of anonymous business clients, Philipp Keyser is trying to track down a missing painting. This is his chance to get back on his feet professionally. As a result, he has no qualms about using the young painter Alma in order to get closer to the painting’s owner. His search for the painting and the closeness to Alma, however, draw him into a vortex in which love and guilt are dangerously intermingled and at the center of which a picture shimmers – which might not even exist …Read More »

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The third film in 13 years from talented German writer-director Maren Ade is an expansive semi-comic portrait of grownup father-daughter awkwardness that also takes a chisel to the corporate bubble-world – and is likely to be one of the very best in this year’s Cannes competition.

‘Feelgood moments’ are, I imagine, something that Sight & Sound readers generally feel a little suspicious of. What’s more, you don’t very often encounter them in Cannes, certainly not in competition, and you certainly wouldn’t expect to come across one in the work of a highly-considered up-and-coming German auteur.Read More »