Quote:
On 24th August 1992 in the eastern German city of Rostock a rampaging mob, to the applause and cheering of more than 3,000 bystanders, besieged and set fire to a residential building containing, among others, more than 120 Vietnamese men, women and children on what has since become known as “The Night of the Fire.” The riots became a symbol for xenophobia in the just recently reunited Germany. This film recounts the incident from the perspectives of three very different characters. Lien is a Vietnamese woman who settled in Germany, but at the end of the day she will be fighting for her life wondering if the place she called home could ever be one for her. Stefan and his friends are part of the night’s violent turmoil. Young and angry, bored during the daytime, they look forward to the nightly riots and clashes with the police and foreigners. Unable to cope with his grief at the loss of a friend, Stefan gets lost in a circle of violence. Stefan’s father Martin is an ambitious local politician, trapped in a dilemma: does he advance his career or stand up for his ideals and take responsibility, which includes that for his son?

Burhan Qurbani - (2014) We Are Young. We Are Strong.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2h 2mn
Size: 	2.39 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x552 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 540 Kbps
BPP: 	0.180
Audio
#1:  	5.1ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/ED489D8ACB802CE/Burhan_Qurbani_-_(2014)_We_Are_Young._We_Are_Strong.mkv

Language(s):German, Vietnamese
Subtitles:English

The post Burhan Qurbani – Wir sind jung. Wir sind stark. AKA We Are Young. We Are Strong. (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A Berlin-set drama centered on a 40-something couple who, separately, fall in love with the same man.

2.18GB | 1h 58m | 1024×432 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/16805ADBB3AA7FA/Tom_Tykwer_-_(2010)_3.mkv

Language:German
Subtitles:English

The post Tom Tykwer – 3 aka Drei (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Der namenlose Tag is Volker Schlöndorff’s first-ever TV crime drama…

Ludwig Winter visits retired crime investigator Jakob Franck and refers to the death of his 17-year-old daughter, Esther, a death filed as a suicide. Winter is convinced that it was murder and asks Franck to reopen the case. In flashbacks we learn that Esther was found hanging from a tree in a park. Forced to bring the bad news to Natalie’s mother, Franck ended up consoling her for the next seven hours. Later, this mother, unable to live with such a tragedy, commits suicide. Several characters bring the plot forward: Sandra (best girlfriend), Jan (boyfriend), Jordan (small boy), Rosie (older lady). Franck habitually solves cases by lying on his comfortable bed and staring at the ceiling until an idea pops into his head.

Der.namenlose.Tag.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-alfaHD.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 29 min
Size: 	3.63 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 592 kb/s
BPP: 	0.108
Audio
#1:  	German 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/83D4110F9D38F51/Der.namenlose.Tag.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-alfaHD.mkv

https://tezfiles.com/file/f994cf4c5a1e9/Der.namenlose.Tag.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-alfaHD.mp4

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English, German

The post Volker Schlöndorff – Der Namenlose Tag AKA The Nameless Day (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A chef discovers that the old saw “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” works for women as well in this romantic comedy from Germany. Gregor (Josef Ostendorf) is a gourmet chef who runs a small but highly regarded restaurant in Berlin. Gregor believes that food can awaken the erotic impulses and he revels in the sensual pleasures of his cooking; however, he hasn’t had much luck in finding someone to share the joy of cooking with him. One night, Gregor meets Eden (Charlotte Roche), a woman who works as a waitress at a nearby resort hotel, and he’s immediately smitten. However, Gregor soon discovers that Eden is married to Xaver (Devid Striesow), an older man who teaches dancercise to the elderly, and they have a young daughter with Down’s syndrome. Since seducing Eden would be out of the question, Gregor does what, for him, is the next best thing — he cooks for her, starting with a special chocolate cake for her birthday, and following with a variety of special dishes that awaken her to the physical pleasures of life. Gregor’s culinary attentions make Eden happier at home, and kick-starts her sex life with her husband, but Xaver thinks something’s not kosher about Eden’s new friend, and when he learns she’s pregnant, he wonders if Gregor might be the father. Eden won the Audience Award at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A rotund chef knows everything about cooking but little about anything else in Michael Hofmann’s nouvelle-cuisine light Eden. Two touching performances only partially compensate for a weak script that never even seems interested in challenging the superb 2001 feature Bella Martha (Mostly Martha), which is the three-star gold standard for food-and-love stories, especially when set in Germany. Eden was the surprise winner of the Audience Award at last year’s Rotterdam Film Festival is currently out on DVD in German-speaking territories and the Benelux and can be seen in limited theatrical release in the UK. The film will be most at home on TV and DVD.

The role of the cucina erotica chef Gregor was specifically written for Lower-Saxon actor Josef Ostendorf, whose acting talent is matched by his impressive girth. Gregor’s three-table restaurant in his home is booked for months ahead and the chef seems incapable of cooking anything that does not inspire orgastic cries of exaltation from his guests. In the opening sequence, Gregor is shown cooking in a way that can only be described as animalistic; his art does not so much seem to be based on rules and knowledge as it is on fine-tuning as he goes along. His life changes when he meets Eden (Charlotte Roche, a German music TV-presenter with an affable presence and a cheeky smile), a young mother with a child with Down Syndrome whose marriage to Xaver (Devid Striesow, Napola), a dance and swimming instructor, is not going well.

Writer-director Michael Hofmann is to be commended for not going in the obvious direction that most such stories seem to take (Bella Martha can be called a lot of things but original is not one of them), but the problem is that Hofmann’s alternative is not particularly profound and leads to a strangely absurd ending that feels as out of place as a quick visit to a drive-in after a prolonged three-course meal. Editing and cinematography are both by-the-numbers, with Eden never reaching the heights of visually sumptuous meals that normally make these food-and-friendship films so watchable (Ang Lee’s Yin shi nan nu/Eat Drink Man Woman comes to mind as a particularly appetising example).

Ostendorf and Roche are both great at creating their characters, but Hofmann gives them preciously little to work with. Gregor seems alone in this world except for his deaf-mute butler and an early flashback involving his mother (where is she now?) and Eden likewise seems alone in this world. Their friendship is not particularly eventful and always dictated by Gregor’s dishes or their absence, even though the verbose Eden tries to convince Gregor — and perhaps herself — otherwise. The only person who seems to have any real friendships is Xaver, who is portrayed as a loser who prefers to go out with his friends rather than stay at home with his wife and their handicapped daughter. In Eden, having friends is like the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It looks delicious from a distance, but you would not want to take a bite.

1.46GB | 1 h 39 min | 998×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3A1B5EEB39B0762/Eden.2006.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:German
Subtitles:English

The post Michael Hofmann – Eden (2006) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The moral conundrum at the heart of Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s “The Counterfeiters” is worthy of Kafka or Dostoevsky: What is the value of a single human life in the face of unspeakable evil? During World War II, one of Europe’s greatest counterfeiters decides, for a while, that his own survival is more important, until inevitably he learns that surrendering one’s soul and humanity may be worse than losing your life altogether.

Last Sunday, the Motion Picture Academy decided that “The Counterfeiters” was the best foreign language film of the year. Thanks to the arcane and idiotic rules of the academy, many other, better films – “The Band’s Visit,” to name one – weren’t allowed to compete in the category, but Ruzowitzky’s film is nonetheless well made, provocative and compelling.

Based on a true story, the film flashes back to 1936 from postwar Monte Carlo, where Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is living it up with a briefcase full of money. Back in Berlin before the war, Sorowitsch, a gambler, loan shark and all-around sleazebag, earned a reputation as king of the counterfeiters. The good life, such as it is, comes to an end for Sorowitsch after the Nazis begin rounding up Jews and sending them off to concentration camps. Sorowitsch is used to living by his wits and quickly wangles his way into a job as an artist for the Nazis, painting portraits of the camp commanders and billboards extolling the glories of the Third Reich. After a few years, he is rescued, as it were, by Herzog (Devid Striesow), the Nazi who first arrested him and is now heading a secret effort to flood the world capital market with phony British pound notes and American dollars and thereby undermine the Allies’ economy.

Unlike other prisoners, the men who are making the fake money live in relative comfort, with decent meals, sheets on their beds instead of straw and fully equipped lavatories with a row of white porcelain sinks. Classical music is piped into their workroom every day. The music is loud, but not loud enough to drown out the gunshots and screams coming from the other barracks in the prison camp. Some of the men in the counterfeiting group, like Sorowitsch, think primarily about their own survival, while others, like Burger (August Diehl), whose wife is in Auschwitz, are willing to put their own lives on the line to sabotage the counterfeiting effort. Burger continues to push Sorowitsch to undermine the counterfeiting efforts, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, not only on the war but also on the existence of the Third Reich itself.

Ruzowitzky’s script is, for the most part, beautifully crafted. The flashback structure is rather an easy way of telling us that Sorowitsch survives the war, but that knowledge is necessary as it informs the complex moral debate at the film’s core. Only the finale seems out of sync with what’s come before. The final scene, of Sorowitsch dancing on a moonlit beach with a Monte Carlo bar girl, is beyond hokey. There are other plot elements that, whether they were based on actual events or not, seem set up, such as the fate of a young Russian prisoner whom Sorowitsch defends.

Ruzowitzky’s direction is mostly quite good and notably economical where it needs to be. He doesn’t waste a lot of time at the beginning of the film telling us that Sorowitsch is an amoral con man and getting him to the concentration camp. It’s a small point, but he displays a welcome respect for his story and for the intelligence of his audience.

But all of Ruzowitzky’s good work would have come to nothing were it not for Markovics, who turns in a chilling and complex performance in the lead role, making the character by turns sympathetic and amorally repugnant. With his underslung jaw and cold, reptilian eyes, Markovics looks as if he’s just crawled out from under a rock. He barely seems to register, much less react to, the horrors around him. And yet, because there is so often a glimmer of humanity in those eyes, Sorowitsch becomes almost sympathetic as we keep hoping he will finally do the right thing. It is a performance of profound, disturbing moral ambiguity that is the real heart of this story.

2.21GB | 1h 38mn | 1024×560 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/4FEB469492A168B/Stefan_Ruzowitzky_-_%282007%29_The_Counterfeiters.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/B28BA86A0386D63/Stefan_Ruzowitzky_-_%282007%29_The_Counterfeiters.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/9C9821D10B301E9/Stefan_Ruzowitzky_-_%282007%29_The_Counterfeiters.part3.rar

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English

The post Stefan Ruzowitzky – Die Fälscher AKA The Counterfeiters [+commentary] (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
A blind pianist living in 18th-century Vienna forms an extraordinary relationship with the physician who is trying to restore her sight.

Review:
Using a period-drama story set in the 18th century, Austrian filmmaker Barbara Albert explores the role of women in contemporary society and their need for freedom of choice.

Barbara Albert is one of the most celebrated personalities in Austrian cinema, active in various different fields as a director, writer, producer and actress. As a director, she introduced herself in 1999 with her debut, Nordrand, which was awarded at Venice. Her next films, Free Radicals (2003), Falling [+] (2006) and The Dead and the Living [+] (2012), were included in competition at many film festivals. Mademoiselle Paradis [+] is Albert’s fifth feature and is currently taking part in the Platform section of the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival.
(The article continues below – Commercial information)

At just 18 years of age, aristocrat Maria Theresia (“Resi”) Paradis (Maria-Victoria Dragus) is a real wunderkind. She lost her eyesight as a child, but she’s an incredibly talented pianist, a close friend of Mozart’s and fairly famous in 18th-century Viennese society. In their quest to restore her vision, her parents come across Franz Anton Mesmer (Devid Striesow), a notorious “miracle” doctor who practises a controversial method. By following Mesmer’s radical treatment, Resi will start regaining her vision. Simultaneously, her musical virtuosity starts to decline, along with her fame, too. Now she has to face a dilemma between art and her health.

Mademoiselle Paradis is a dark period drama, elegantly depicted through Christine A Maier’s cinematography, and set in the culturally vibrant Habsburgian era. Albert was inspired by the true story of Paradis, whose work did not survive in its entirety. The film is an adaptation of the successful novel Mesmerized by Alissa Walser, and the script was penned by Kathrin Resetarits. Incidentally, this is the first film that Albert has directed without also writing it.

Even though the story is set in 1777, the topics it deals with are still contemporary. Resi, mesmerisingly portrayed by rising star Dragus, is a true pioneer of her generation, in an open-minded but still excessively austere artistic society. She’s only accepted on account of her talent and her disability combined. When she starts losing one of her skills, she must face up to reality and observe how a so-called cultured society deals with someone who dares to differ, especially when it is a woman who is demanding respect on her own merits, and her freedom. In order to break free from socially imposed constraints, she has to let go of something, and there emerges the moral question of how far Resi should go just to feel accepted.

Doctor Mesmer may seemingly be the only one who truly cares about Paradis’ health, but he still treats her as just another attraction for the bourgeoisie. He persuades her to sacrifice the images conjured up by the music, which are the source of her virtuosity, in favour of a substitute reality, just to prove himself correct. The film is built on constant fights between antithetic pairs – between bleak reality and bright fantasy, between liberating art and constrained science, and between cynical rationalism and Rococo romanticism. Mademoiselle Paradis is not a movie that talks about the past, because just like Resi, there are still women today who are forced to choose between a depressing but secure darkness, and a frightening but awfully revealing light.

— Vassilis Economou (Cineuropa.org).

https://nitro.download/view/ED98BA30764AC9F/licht.2017.german.1080p.bluray.x264-universum.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/7C8B0AF2511494E/licht.2017.german.1080p.bluray.x264-universum-eng.idx
https://nitro.download/view/B0DDC8DC15489D3/licht.2017.german.1080p.bluray.x264-universum-eng.sub

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English (idx/sub)

The post Barbara Albert – Mademoiselle Paradis (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Öllers and Niederländer have everything under control. For the past six years, the two successful business consultants have been traveling through some of the seediest countries around the world in order to satisfy their clients’ greed.

https://nitro.download/view/790A7774CA08931/Zeit.der.Kannibalen.2014.German.BDRiP.AC3.XViD-CRG.avi
https://nitro.download/view/12AE15C525B0CFB/Zeit.der.Kannibalen.2014.German.BDRiP.AC3.XViD-CRG.srt

Language(s):German, English
Subtitles:English

The post Johannes Naber – Zeit der Kannibalen (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.