Theatre director Leander Haußmann's box office
success Sonnenallee (The Eastie Boys)
opened the New German Films section yesterday. The delightful
coming-of-age story set in 1970s East Berlin, which is touted
as the first film about the fall of the Berlin Wall, attracted
over two million admissions and proved that over-eager East
German functionaries and malicious 'Wessis' (West Germans)
couldn't deny the East its fun, whether in love, life or
rock 'n' roll.
The
impressive cast includes stalwarts Katharina Thalbach and
Henry Hübchen, as well as new discovery Alexander Scheer.
Klaus
Krämer's debut, Drei Chinesen Mit Dem Kontrabass
(Three Chinamen With A Double Bass), is
less about Chinamen than about a corpse needing to be
disposed of, while Sebastian Schipper's Absolute
Giganten (Gigantic) is an endearing ode
to three friends and their adventures on their last night
together. The film's highlight is quite possibly the most
breathtaking and intense table football match in the history
of cinema.
Fussball
Ist Unser Leben (Soccer Rules!) deals with
the ultimate kick. Tomy Wiegand shows how Germany's favourite
pastime can degenerate into its worst nightmare. Heinz
Badewitz praises Wiegand's debut as "a brilliant work".
Men
and Schtonk! star Uwe Ochsenknecht plays a rabid
fan of the football club Schalke 04, who kidnaps his favourite
team's sickly star to get him back into shape.
Closing
night film Oi! Warning (by sibling directorial
team Dominik and Benjamin Reding), which made a splash
at Sundance, and Downhill City by Hannu Salonen, which
bowed at the Munich Film fest, are other noteworthy directorial
debuts.
Badewitz
waxes hopeful about the abundance of first-time directors:
"This wealth of talent bodes well for the future of German
film," he says.
German
cinema master Egon Günther's latest production, the
costume drama Die Braut (The Mask Of
Desire) boasts a convincing performance by Veronica
Ferres as Goethe's mistress, Christiane Vulpius.
Also
showing is Doris Dörrie's recently opened Erleuchtung
Garantiert (Enlightenment Guaranteed) with
Uwe Ochsenknecht this time on an odyssey through Japan.
Rolf
Schübel's Ein Lied Von Liebe Und Tod
Gloomy Sunday (Gloomy Sunday) is a tragic
love story set to haunting music played against the background
of the Third Reich's persecution of Jews in Budapest.
German stars Ben Becker and Joachim Król face off
as oppressor and victim while Erika Maroszan plays the
woman torn between them and the composer Andras (Stefano
Dionisi).
Documentaries
dominate the 10 films selected by the Forum (which will
also be open to the public). In Aysun Bademsoy's Deutsche
Polizisten (German Policemen), young policemen
of Turkish origin must keep the peace with their former
compatriots in Berlin's Turkish stronghold, the district
of Kreuzberg.
A
suitcase full of photographs is the point of departure
for Verzeihung, Ich Lebe (Sorry, I'm
Still Alive) by Andrzej Klamt. The photographs show
Holocaust survivors who tell the director of their grief
and guilt about having lived when others were less fortunate.
In
Russlands Wunderkinder (Russia's Wonderchildren),
director Irene Langmann presents young virtuoso musicians
torn from their childhoods and put into an elite microcosm
one does not usually associate with contemporary Russia.
Blumen
Lieben Oben, by Erwin Michelberger, investigates
a young south German woman's mysterious death in leftist
Kreuzberg circles.
The
future of German cinema does not lie in desperately trying
to compete with America, according to Badewitz.
"No
country in the world can beat the Americans' might," he
says. A more appropriate approach is underlining European
films' specific identity, ensuring success in their own
countries and building upon intra-European solidarity.
The
latter makes the screening of European films in neighbouring
countries possible. Badewitz's championing of German cinema
in all its diversity is a contribution to this aim.
A
total of 30 films, 21 with English subtitles, will be
screened for German and foreign accredited guests for
the first time at Potsdamer Platz, in CinemaxX cinema
1.
