Agnes und seine Brüder – Weird Family Life Reduxed
By Dorothea Holloway | August 13, 2008
In Oskar Roehler’s melodrama, Agnes und seine Brüder (Agnes and His Brothers) (2004), the focus is on three entirely different brothers who have something in common: they all had suffered under a dominating father who, it was said, abused one of his sons in childhood.
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Der Man von der Botschaft – Georgian Teenager Tryst
By Nina Moritz | August 12, 2008
Herbert Neumann (Burghardt Klaussner won the Golden Leopard in Locarno for his role) is an attaché at the German embassy in Tbilisi/Georgia in Dito Tsintsadze’s Der Man von der Botschaft (The Man from the Embassy) (2006). He spends his life between computer role-playing, a substitute for a family life, and an affair with his Georgian colleague Nana. His situation changes when he gets to know 12-year-old Sashka (splendid: Lika Martinova) who lives in a home for refugees.
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Kroko – Macho Mädchen Meets Her Match
By Dorothea Holloway | August 12, 2008
Her real name is Julia, but she prefers “Kroko” – short for “krokodil” (crocodile). A rough-and-tumble street-girl with ice-cold eyes and a temperament to match in Silke Enders’s Kroko (2003), Kroko (Franziska Jünger) is the no-nonsense leader of a gang of shop-lifters in the Berlin-Wedding working-man’s district. All the 16-year-old diva cares about is her flashy clothes, her equally gaudy lifestyle, her cool macho boyfriend Eddie (Hinnerk Schönemann, in a cutting-edge performance), and whatever it takes to get what she wants.
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Das Wunder von Bern – German Football Legend
By Christoph Sedlag | August 12, 2008
It was the best German film of the past year – Sönke Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Bern) (Germany, 2003). And not just for audiences who like sports. For soccer fans, however, an absolute must! This is the story of Helmut Rahn, the lad from the industrial Ruhr who scored that winning goal in the final match of the 1954 World Cup in Bern.
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Herr Lehmann – Westalgie Blues in Berlin-Kreuzberg
By Gregor Sedlag | August 12, 2008
Given that Leander Haussmann’s Sonnenallee (1999) was the mother of all Ostalgie films, TV shows, and other phenomena coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, this “nostalgia for the GDR” goes a long way to explain why Good Bye, Lenin! (Germany, 2003) became such a huge success at the box office. By the same coin, Sonnenallee, wrapped in the sentimental style of an ironic, witty film musical, appeared on the scene too early to ride the wave to international success. But it did set the stage for the director’s hilarious sequel – Herr Lehmann (Germany, 2003).
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Immer nie am Meer – Forever Never Anywhere Farce
By Claudia Gedoe | August 12, 2008
It’s been a long time since I laughed so much as I did upon viewing Antonin Svoboda’s wonderful, way-out, black comedy Immer nie am Meer (Austria, 2003). Forever Never Anywhere begins when in the middle of the night the unfortunate solo-entertainer Schwanenmeister (Heinz Strunk) lands with his car in a ditch because of a failed masturbation attempt.
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Das Herz ist ein dunkler Wald – Bourgeois Sex Runs Amok
By Tatjana Turanskj | August 12, 2008
Das Herz ist ein dunkler Wald (Germany, 2007), the second film by actress-director Nicolette Krebitz, is an exceedingly stylized film about real existing sexual relations in the (petite) bourgeois world. The middle-class housewife and mother Marie (Nina Hoss) discovers that her husband, a successful musician (Devid Striesow) has not only betrayed her, but that he has also been leading an almost identical life with a mutual acquaintance (Franziska Petri).
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Prinzessinnenbad – Teenager Trio in Berlin-Kreuzberg
By Werner Sedlag | August 12, 2008
In Bettina Blümner’s debut feature Prinzessinnenbad (Germany, 2007) we are abruptly tossed right in the middle of the shimmering life of young girls. The story is easily told. We accompany Klara, Mina and Tanutscha, all 15-years-old and the best of friends, as they live each day as it comes. Their playground is multi-ethnic Berlin-Kreuzberg, where their rounds take them from home to the less liked school to the much loved freedom of the streets.
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Kirschblüten – Hanami – Cherry Blossoms Fairy Tale
By Werner Sedlag | August 12, 2008
From white sausage idyll to cherry blossoms, from Bavarian grumbler to Butoh dancer, a broad wondrous curve is drawn taut, and somethings are indeed astonishing in Doris Dörrie’s Kirschblüten – Hanami (Cherry Blossoms) (Germany, 2007). The story of an elderly couple in the Bavarian province, it opens when she finds out from doctors how hopelessly sick he is and talks him into a lengthy excursion.
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Le Silence de Lorna – Dardenne Brothers Mafia Caper
By Anette Unger | August 11, 2008
At the Cannes Film Festival, Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne presented their latest work Le Silence de Lorna (Belgium/France/Italy/Germany, 2008) – a film about the Mafia’s racketeering and the passionate path of an Albanian emigrant in Belgium. Lorna, an Albanian woman who lives in Belgium, has one single dream: together with her boyfriend Solko she wants to set up a snack bar. In order to be able to realize her wish, Lorna becomes part of a devilish plan, stage-managed by a middleman of the Russian Mafia, taxi driver Fabio.
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