One of the few East German directors to have adapted readily to reunification, 49-year-old Helke Misselwitz will be familiar to San Sebastián audiences for her 1992 film, Herzsprung about life in the small town of the same name near Berlin after the Wall came down which received a special mention here for its humorous yet sensitive treatment of dead-end lives.
Known mainly for the documentaries she began making for the DEFA Documentary Studio (where she was employed full time as a director between 1988 and 1991) and has continued to make since reunification (last year's Meine Liebe deine Liebe/My Love Your Love is the most recent), Misselwitz returns to features with another searching look at life in the former East Germany in the shape of Engelchen (Little Angel), a film set in and around Berlin's Ostkreuz railway station.
Like most of the city's transport centres, the Ostkreuz has become home to a number of marginal people left behind by the fading economic miracle and making a living as best they can. The 'little angel' of the title is Ramona Schneider (Susanne Lothar), a hypersensitive woman who has a compulsive fascination with the darker side of life. At the station, she meets up and falls in love with a black-market cigarette-seller called Andrzej (played by Polish star Cezary Pazura) a relationship which is obviously doomed. And it is with downward spiral of the affair and of Ramona's life - that Misselwitz's film is concerned.
Very much dependent for its effect on the convincing recreation of life around the Ostkreuz station, Little Angel produced by Babelsberg-based Thomas Wilkening in association with national broadcaster ZDF (for whom it was commissioned by the ubiquitous Christoph Holch) is notable for the casting of the various characters who hang out there, all of whom (including relatively minor parts) are played by distinguished Berlin theatre actors.
Prod co: Thomas Wilkening Film, ZDF
Prod: Thomas Wilkening.
Dir/Guión (Scr): Helke Misselwitz.
Foto (Ph): Thomas Plenert
Mont (Ed): Gudrun Steinbrück
Ints (Cast): Susanne Lothar (Ramona Schneider), Cezary Pazura (Andrzej), Sophie Rois (Mother), Herbert Fritsch (Papa Klaus), Kathrin Angerer (Lucie), Luise Wolfram (Child), Heide Kipp (Grandmother), Heidemarie Schneider (Doctor)
Programación (Screening): 12.00, 24 Sept, Victoria Eugenia; 19.00, 24 Sept, Victoria Eugenia; 23.00, 24 Sept, Astoria, 1; 18.15, 25 Sept, Astoria, 3
[Home ] [Content ] [The Sponsors ] [The Team ] [Comments ] [Help ]
