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Last year, in September of 2005, the German Embassy in Macedonia programmed in Skopje an exemplary, all-embracing German Film Festival, featuring classic cinema as well as recent film production. It was an immediate hit with the public, particularly among students and aficionados of German language and culture. This year, the Festival des Neuen Deutschen Films (7-12 September 2006) is back with a program of feature films and documentaries by the cream of Germany’s directorial talent. Organized by Ulrike Erdmann at the German Embassy, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the series features acclaimed and awarded films by Marc Rothemund, Andres Veiel, Christian Petzold, Hans-Christian Schmid, Andreas Dresen, Fatih Akin, and Christian Wagner, among others. Indeed, for the cineaste interested in knowing more about the high standards achieved by German Autoren on the international festival circuit, this series provides a rich, must-see experience, a roller-coaster ride through the highlights of the past five German film seasons.

The festival opens with a greeting by Ralf Breth, the German Ambassador to Macedonia. Then the festival kicks off with Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl — Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl — The Last Days) (2004), awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director and the Silver Bear to Julia Jentsch for Best Actress at the 2005 Berlinale. Julia Jentsch, already an accomplished stage actress, gives a moving performance as the conscience of the 1943 »White Rose« anti-Hitler conspiracy that ended in death by the guillotine. Programmer Ulrike Erdmann plans to have young German actress Julia Hummer on hand for the screening of Christian Petzold’s Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In) (2000), about a terrorist family still on the run years after going underground in which Hummer plays the uprooted and disoriented teenaged daughter. She also appears in Petzold’s Gespenster (Ghosts) (2005), a competition entry at the 2005 Berlinale that can be considered a coda to The State I Am In.

Andres Veiel’s Black Box BRD (2000), awarded the prestigious European Documentary of the Year award, parallels the lives and deaths of terrorist Wolfgang Grams and bank director Alfred Herrhausen. In this insightful documentary, five years in the making, Andres Veiel had the good fortune to interview the parents of Wolfgang Grams and the wife of Alfred Herrhausen — rare, personal, revealing, important moments that make for high drama. Black Box BRD poses as many questions as he gives answers to events of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Also on the program is Andres Veiel’s fiction-documentary Die Spielwütigen (Addicted to Acting) (2003). As dynamic as it is entertaining, Addicted to Acting was carved out of 200 hours of recorded interviews with four applicants (three women, one man) to the Ernst-Busch-Schule in Berlin, as well as the instructors at the school.

Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head On) (2003), Golden Bear winner at the 2003 Berlinale, introduces a Turkish-German director with a foot in both cultures. Shot in Hamburg and Istanbul, Head On doesn’t pull punches in this biting portrayal of hardships endured by many second-generation Turks in Germany at the crossroad between two cultures. The roadmovie side of Fatih Akin’s directorial talent is visible in Im Juli (In July) (2002), a commercial hit that begins in Germany, then crosses Europe, and ends up in Turkey. Currently, Fatih Akin is shooting another roadmovie: Auf der anderen Seite des Lebens (On the Other Side of Life), set in Hamburg, Bremen, and Turkey.

Hans-Christian Schmid’s award-winning Requiem (2006), recipient of the Silver Bear for actress Sandra Hüller at this year’s Berlinale, chronicles the inner sufferings of a sensitive, intelligent girl under a domineering mother. When her epileptic fits are falsely interpreted in a strict religious environment as possession by the devil, the attempted exorcism leads to tragedy. Well known for his sympathy for the »losers« in modern-day society, Hans-Christian Schmid’s awarded Lichter (Distant Lights) (2003) — programmed in Skopje at the 2005 German Film Festival — reworked thematically five different episodes on the German-Polish border, where body-smugglers daily take their chances with the law. Christian Wagner is another prominent »landscape director« whose films deal with self-knowledge and spiritual renewal. In Ghettokids (Ghetto Kids) (2002) he chronicles the efforts of a teacher (Barbara Rudnik) to help disadvantaged children in her care at a Munich school in a tough juvenile neighborhood. Ghetto Kids belongs to that cycle of sociocritical feature films dealing with juvenile crime, among them Esther Gronenborn’s alaska.de (2000) and Detlef Buck’s Knallhart (Tough Enough) (2006).

Andreas Dresen’s Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer in Berlin) (2005) was one of the commercial hits of the past German season. A director with a sure hand for handling actors, Andreas Dresen portrays the bittersweet side of life as experienced by two girlfriends from a balcony overlooking Helmhotzplatz in Prenzlauer Berg. A tragicomedy with dialogue honed to fit the protagonists like a glove, Summer in Berlin via its screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase is a throwback to Gerhard Klein’s Berlin — Ecke Schönhauser (GDR, 1957). »Berlin stories« have always been the bread-and-butter of German cinema. Dieter Köster and Hannelore Conradsen’s Wilde Clique (Berliners on Sunday) (1983), a low-budget independent film awarded a Max-Ophüls-Prize at the Saarbrücken festival, accurately took the pulse of West Berliners in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And Berliners on Sunday was an offhand salute to Robert Siodmak’s classic silent film Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) (1929). Indeed, this remarkable quartet of Berlin films — People on Sunday (1929), Berlin — Ecke Schönhauser (1957), Berliners on Sunday (1983), and Summer in Berlin (2005) — draws on a long and vital cinematic tradition rooted in the everyday of a world metropolis.

Dorothea and Ron Holloway