German Films at MIF in Cannes 2002

You might say that the 36 scheduled screenings of 27 New German Films programmed in the Marché International du Film (MIF) at Cannes amounts to a festival within a festival. Four are world market premieres, while seven more are listed as international market premieres ­ that is, they have never been at any other film market outside of Germany. Others were awarded at the Berlinale, the Max Ophüls-Prize Competition at Saarbrücken, the Filmfest München, and the Leipzig DOKfestival. Some received a Bavarian Film Prize or were nominated for a Lola (German Film Awards). And a handful more were discoveries at the Hof festival and the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, the latter a new section launched this year at the Berlinale.

       One film should not to be missed by the cinéaste and film historian: Thomas Schadt’s Berlin: Sinfonie einer Grossstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City) ­ the remake-homage to Walter Ruttmann’s silent film classic, Berlin: Sinfonie der Grossstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City) (Germany, 1927). Since the only title difference between the two documentaries is the use of the possessive article »a« (Schadt) instead of »the« (Ruttmann), we are given the impression that all the rest is pretty much the same. But, indeed, there is a slight thematic difference that opens the door wide to back-to-back comparative viewings at world film festivals.
       In an accompanying publication for a special-event premiere of his »Berlin Symphony« at the Filmmuseum Berlin, Thomas Schadt aptly drew a comparison between Walter Ruttmann’s film documentary and the still photos, street photography, and graphic illustrations of August Sander, Heinrich Zille, and Lee Friedländer. He also underscored that the subject of both films is »Berlin ­ with all its vitality and facets of life.« Where else, he maintains, can you find such striking images of people going to work, attending sports events, meeting in bars and cafes, lolling around parks, and strolling through department stores. As for his own updated »symphony«, it includes footage of the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of innovative city architecture, the redone Reichstag and the new Chancery, the Love Parade and the Berlinale. One image hasn't changed at all: lovers cuddling on a bench in Tiergarten!

       Berlin during the Roarin’ Twenties is also the theme of Carlo Rola’s Sass (The Sass Brothers), a half-truth, half-fiction story of two bank-robbers who became a legend in their own time. »I was 13-years-old when my father told me the story of these master thieves,« said Rola, who came to cinema by way of stage and TV productions. »In fact, my father told me he once saw them personally in the audience at a show in the Wintergarten.&lasquo; The story begins in 1924, just after the devaluation of the German mark and with unemployment at its peak.
       Franz and Erich, the Sass brothers, discover at their auto-repair shop that they can easily cut through safes with a powerful blow-torch. Five years later, after pulling off one successful coup after another, they are admired by the public and tolerated by the police for sharing their booty with friends and poor. But when the Nazis come to power in 1933, they are blamed for robbing a bank of deposits belonging to party members. Turned over to the Gestapo, they are sent to jail and shot in 1940. This is the first time Ben Becker and Jürgen Vogel, two of Germany’s heralded young screen stars, have appeared together in a major film production tailored to their talents. It surely won’t be the last.

       Two directorial debuts are standouts in the current German season: Horst Sczerba’s Herz (Heart) and Benjamin Quabeck’s Nichts bereuen (No Regrets), both cut from real life and unrelentingly honest in the portrayal of hopes that only led to frustration. In Sczerba’s Heart, the first cinema film by the award-winning writer-director of telefeatures, the troubled backgrounds of diving-members in the Cologne »Tropical Dive« club are explored, all of whom prefer the weightless underwater world to daily concerns in their professional lives. In Quabeck’s No Regrets, winner of the HypoVereinsbank Prize for Best Debut Film at the Filmfest München, Daniel Brühl gives an outstanding performance as a 19-year old high-school graduate eager to go out and conquer the world, save that he hasn’t yet slept with a women. Nothing works out, as he stumbles from one faux pas to another and is eventually blamed for the death of a sick old man while doing civil-service work instead of army duty. Daniel Brühl, the one genuine shooting star on the German scene, also gives a strong performance as a young schizophrenic in Hans Weingartner’s Das weisse Rauschen (The White Noise) and is a favorite of many to win a Lola Award.

       Three films featured at last year’s Montreal World Film Festival are highly recommended for acting performances and overall screen credits. In Hardy Martins’s remake of So weit die Füsse tragen (As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me), a remake for the cinema of a German television classic produced 40 years ago, Russian camera Pavel Lebeshev heightens the drama of a German soldier returning home from a Soviet prison camp with stunning images of the wilds of Siberia: snow-covered mountains and valleys, seemingly impenetrable forests, and raging rivers ­ in short, 155 minutes of action-packed adventure. In Jeanine Meerapfel’s Annas Sommer (Anna’s Summer), a German-Greek-Spanish coproduction, Spanish actress Angela Molina gives a refined, withdrawn performance as a middle-aged photo-journalist who resolves her inner pain by retracing family history via documents found in an old family truck in a villa on a Greek island. And in Joseph Vilsmeier’s Leo & Claire Michael Degen gives a commanding performance as a doomed Jewish businessman, who finds it hard to accept the changes in his native Germany in the fateful year of 1933.

       Other MIF screenings include the following »festival highlights«: Stanislaw Mucha’s Absolut Warhola, seen at Leipzig, is a warming tongue-in-cheek documentary on Andy Warhol’s Slovak family. Almut Getto’s Fickende Fische (Do Fish Do It?), awarded at Saarbrücken, scores as a poignant social drama on how youths handle the dilemma of an AIDS infection resulting from blood transfusions. Andreas Dresen’s Halbe Treppe (Grill Point) and Dominik Graf’s Der Felsen (A Map of the Heart), both invited to compete at this year’s Berlinale, are reviewed in this issue of KINO. Ben Verbong’s Das Sams (The Slurb), about a mild-mannered gentleman whose spirits are lifted by the presence of a little unidentified red-headed imp (the »slurb« in the title), has been nominated for a Lola Award in the Children and Youth Film category.

       Last, but certainly not least, there are the two world market premieres produced by the prolific Regina Ziegler at Ziegler-Film in Berlin, both aimed for the English speaking markets as well as the home public. Wolf Gremm’s Nancy & Frank ­ A Manhattan Love Story stars Hardy Krüger Jr. and newcomer Frances Anderson in a passionate love story with road-movie elements that’s set in the metropolis of New York and on Cape Cod. And John Henderson’s Suche impotenten Mann fürs Leben (Wanted: Impotent Man for a Lifetime), adapted from Gaby Hauptmann’s novel, comes across as a funny sex farce with touches of the sophisticated screwball comedy.

       In honor of the German films presented at the 55th Cannes International Film Festival there will be a coctail reception held on Monday, 20 May 2002, from 5 pm to 7 pm, at Marché Forville in the old town of Cannes. The opening speech will be given by the German Federal State Minister for Cultural Affairs and the Media, Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin.

The Editors