The Perspektive Deutsches Kino programme will open with Stephan Lacant’s fictional film Freier Fall (kurhaus production, Baden-Baden). Max Riemelt (Kay), Katharina Schüttler (Bettina) and Hanno Koffler (Marc) are the protagonists in a love triangle, in which Marc and Bettina are expecting a child at the same time as Marc falls in love with his colleague Kay.
Three of the fictional films - Silvi (directed by Nico Sommer), DeAD (directed by Sven Halfar) and Endzeit (directed by Sebastian Fritzsch) - were self-produced by their respective filmmakers, who creatively sought indirect funding. Silvi (suesssauerfilm, Berlin) is unmistakably set in Berlin. In it the 47-year-old title character (Lina Wendel) starts afresh after separating from her partner. DeAD (Skalar Film, Hamburg) is exquisite pulp fiction from Hamburg: following his mother’s suicide, cool Patrick (Tilman Strauß) shows up at his unknown father’s 60th birthday party and immediately makes it clear that things are about to escalate. And Endzeit (Fritzsch & Tiefenbach film production) depicts survival after a catastrophe, when a young woman (Anne von Keller) turns hunter to still her hunger.
Two fictional film-academy works explore the boundaries between fictional and documentary film. Anne Zohra Berrached’s Zwei Mütter (Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) portrays in an almost documentary style a couple’s wish for a child (Sabine Wolf and Karina Plachetka) and their discovery that most sperm banks do not provide services to same-sex couples. In his 60-minute film Die Wiedergänger (HFF Munich), director Andreas Bolm avoids presenting the world in documentary form, but instead seeks the point where fiction begins. The outcome is an artistically austere film about loss and eternal return.
Also the two shorter films, Chiralia (directed by Santiago Gil/dffb, Berlin) and Kalifornia (directed by Laura Mahlberg/Merz Akademie Stuttgart), have their own personal styles - arousing high expectations for these students’ first full-length films.
Three very different documentaries complete the programme. Director Sebastian Mez made his film Metamorphosen (Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) about the widely forgotten but still highly radioactive area around the Mayak nuclear facility in the southern Urals. In her film Die mit dem Bauch tanzen (HUPE Film – und Fernsehproduktion, Cologne), Carolin Genreith takes an intimate look at getting older and a “magic weapon” against it: belly dancing. And Sandra Kaudelka, once a competitive East German athlete herself, tells of former top GDR athletes in her documentary Einzelkämpfer (Lichtblick Media, Berlin).
On February 17, 2013, Berlinale Kinotag (the Berlinale’s cinema day exclusively for the public), Perspektive Deutsches Kino will screen the winner of the Max Ophüls Award 2013 for fictional film. It will also show the eleven-minute winner of the First Steps Award 2012 in the category documentary film, Reality 2.0 (directed byVictor Orozco Ramirez), as well as Anatomie des Weggehens (directed by Serban Oliver Tataru), a nominee for the award.
Perspektive Deutsches Kino film list
Chiraliaby Santiago Gil
DeADby Sven Halfar
Die mit dem Bauch tanzen (Dancing with Bellies) by Carolin Genreith (documentary)
Einzelkämpfer (I Will Not Lose) by Sandra Kaudelka (documentary)
Endzeit (End of Time) by Sebastian Fritzsch
Freier Fall (Free Fall) by Stephan Lacant
Kalifornia by Laura Mahlberg
Metamorphosen by Sebastian Mez (documentary)
Silvi by Nico Sommer
Die Wiedergänger (The Revenants) by Andreas Bolm
Zwei Mütter (Two Mothers) by Anne Zohra Berrached
