German

Synopsis
Austrian experimental documentary maker Peter Schreiner undertakes a psychoanalytic quest for human existence. It’s a cross between Freud and Sartre, magical and minimalist, as long as you dare.
Two wrinkled lovers, marked by life, expose their deepest inner emotions. Giuliana compares the vaults of her spirit with closed doors that you ‘have to open cautiously’. ‘But,’ Christian wonders, ‘does that make you happier?’ They talk slowly and calmly, looking for the right words for their inner demons. It all comes down to reason and feeling and where the two meet. About reality that looks both familiar and alienating. Read More »

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Daniel, Mark, Rico, Pitbull and Paul. A group of East German friends grow up in the early 90s. The first years of reunified Germany – when everything was colliding, when everything seemed possible. From boyhood to rough-and-tumble teenagers, the Leipzig suburbs were their whole world. Daniel was in love, Rico was the greatest boxer. And Starlet was the prettiest girl they had ever known. They party, they riot, they run a techno club, run from neo-Nazis, their parents and the future. They are coming of age in a time of anarchy.Read More »

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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.Read More »

Synopsis:
Fourteen-year-old Stefan Kolbe, along with his mother and sister, moves from an idyllic small town to the developing area of Berlin-Marzahn, where his father works as a construction worker. Stefan must find his way in a completely new environment and surrounded by strange people. Stefan gets to know two girls, who attempt to seduce him, and gets himself into trouble with the landlord, who kisses up to societal authority figures. He becomes friends with the anxious Hubert, defends him against the constant humiliation of the older student Windjacke, and encourages him to stand up for himself. It ends tragically in a bitter fight between Stefan and Windjacke.Read More »

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Maria is a student at the university of Essen, Germany, living and working in a gray, unpleasant, and anonymous environment. While she has little problem finding someone for a one night stand, she rebuffs her lovers in such a rude way that they actually don’t know what’s going on. But what seems to be a negative attitude at first glance is in fact much worse: Maria is suffering from borderline syndrome, a serious psychotic disease that makes her fail to develop a continuous, reliable personality, from her own perspective as well as from the perspective of those she meets. Then one day, she bumps into Jan, a student who falls in love with her without delay. He’s awaiting a hard time when he has to learn how hard it is to stay loyal and faithful to a person who, in her own words, “has a different world inside of her head” and who feels that “there is something inside of me that eats me up.”Read More »

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There are times in “Mephisto” when the hero tries to explain himself by saying that he’s only an actor, and he has that almost right: All he is, is an actor. It’s not his fault that the Nazis have come to power, and that as a German-speaking actor he must choose between becoming a Nazi and being exiled into a foreign land without jobs or German actors. As long as he is acting, as long as he is not called upon to risk his real feelings, this man can act his way into the hearts of women, audiences, and the Nazi power structure. This is the story of a man who plays his life wearing masks, fearing that if the last mask is removed, he will have no face.Read More »

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The pursuit of truth is a demand that cannot be fulfilled through seeing alone. An encounter with cinema resides through a locale of turbulent openings that allow a mental space for future thought still to be developed. Our very idea of narrative enjoyment is a misnomer, a cul­-de-­sac that needn’t answer anything other than enjoyment. Yet there exists an avenue where the idea of enjoyment is something only to be savoured retrospectively; the experience of this achievement is of the moment – painful, meditative and transcendental. Philip Gröning’s The Police Officer’s Wife (2013) arrives burdened by existing on its own terms, a film experienced but not particularly enjoyed by most at Venice last year.Read More »

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Albrecht Froben, though married to Octavia, falls in love with his neighbor, Äls Flodéen. She, however, is slowly dying from a debilitating disease. During an epidemic, Albrecht goes to bring her daughter to safety but he catches typhoid and is quarantined in hospital. Octavia, realising the love match, and hearing that Als is now bedridden and dying, dresses up as him and rides by her gates every day to keep her spirits up – her bed is next to the window. Albrecht returns. Äls has a dream in which she talks to her projection of Albrecht and concludes that she does not wish to take part in this union and accepts death. Albrecht is reconciled with his wife.Read More »

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The topic of the film is Alois Brummer, a likeable and inoffensive man from Lower Bavaria, a sex film producer. A man, small and round in stature, unusually active, with a nose for the market, dealing in films and girls in his own special manner in Bavaria – as another man would deal in used cars. There are worse things in our market-oriented society and in film as well. The film describes a forgotten or neglected form of triviality.Read More »