With 14 films, including nine full-length and five medium-long fictional and documentary films (30 to 63 min), the selection for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2015 has now been completed.
The programme will open with the German-French co-production Im Sommer wohnt er unten (Summers Downstairs / produced by Osiris Media, Berlin and Osiris Media France, Saint-Palais-sur-Mer), a debut film by actor and director Tom Sommerlatte. This fictional feature is about two brothers who meet with their partners at their parent’s summer house on the French Atlantic coast. From the start, they are caught in a web of dependencies and their roles in their families. However, through a series of power plays, constellations begin to shift. Filmed in cinemascope, Sommerlatte gives his ensemble of performers so much scope that the protagonists’ individual stories take on universal dynamics.
In Brodie Higgs’s directorial debut, Elixir (produced by Elixir Films, Berlin; Elixir Films, Woollahra), a group of provocative artists lives together in a very elaborately decorated factory loft in Berlin. They are planning a political-artistic action at the fashion show of a hip designer. With this German-Australian co-production, the two dffb graduates Susanne Mann and Paul Zischler exemplify the trend, also among a new generation of filmmakers, to produce internationally.
Bube Stur (Stubborn Boy), a co-production of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb), and the Film University Babelsberg – Konrad Wolf, is the graduation film of director Moritz Krämer (dffb). It is the tale of a young city woman who is assigned work hours at a milk farmer’s in a small village in the Black Forest Highlands. The mountains in the background form an impressively vast panorama that stands in contrast to the narrow world of the villagers. The naturalistic images, somewhat documentary in style, help acquaint the viewer with the idiosyncrasies of the language, land and people.
These three fictional features are all shot in cinemascope and reveal their directors’ keen awareness of form, a quality also found in the four documentaries invited to this year’s Perspektive. In Freiräume (Unoccupied / produced by KHM, Cologne), director Filippa Bauer focuses consistently throughout the film on the living spaces of four women who are separated, divorced or widowed. Heard in off-camera interviews, but not seen, they talk about the spatial and emotional void that has been left by their children after they moved out - and how they are dealing with this situation.
In Sag mir Mnemosyne(Tell Me Mnemosyne /produced by Lisa Sperling), director Lisa Sperling sets out to find traces of her deceased great uncle, cinematographer Karl-Heinz Hummel. Here, too, the protagonist is not seen but presented through the places where he worked and footage from his films. An essayistic documentary film whose images are a tribute to the great movies of the past. Also screening in this programme is Anabela Angelovska’s 30-minute documentary Hakie – Haki. Ein Leben als Mann. (Hakie – Haki. Living as a Man. / produced by Anabela Angelovska) about 71-year-old Hakie, who was born as a girl but raised as a boy in Albania.
The final film of the series is the documentary Sprache:Sex (Sex:Speak / produced by Sprechfilm, Berlin) by Saskia Walker and Ralf Hechelmann. In individual, very personal conversations, which are marked by a great openness, 13- to 74-year-olds talk about their intimate private lives and sexuality. The filmmakers have assembled these interviews so that the subjective views of their protagonists come together to form a bigger story that expands into the philosophical.
On February 15, 2015 - Berlinale Publikumstag - the Perspektive will present the winning films of the FGYO-Award Dialogue en perspective, the Max Ophüls Award 2015 as well as the First Steps Award 2014 for Best Documentary (DieMenschenliebe / The Humanitarians, directed by: Maximilian Haslberger).
Bube Stur (Stubborn Boy)
Germany
By Moritz Krämer
with Ceci Chuh, Niels Braun, Monika Wiedemer
World premiere
Elixir
Germany/Australia
By Brodie Higgs
With Natasha Petrovikj, Swann Arlaud, Stipe Erceg, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Sebastian Pawlak
World premiere
Im Sommer wohnt er unten (Summers Downstairs)
Germany/France
By Tom Sommerlatte
With Sebastian Fräsdorf , Alice Pehlivanyan, Karin Hanczewski, Godehard Giese, William Peiro
World premiere
Documentaries:
Freiräume (Unoccupied)
Germany
By Filippa Bauer
World premiere
Hakie – Haki. Ein Leben als Mann. (Hakie – Haki. Living as a Man.)
Germany
By Anabela Angelovska
World premiere
Sag mir Mnemosyne (Tell Me Mnemosyne)
Germany
By Lisa Sperling
World premiere
Sprache:Sex (Sex:Speak
Germany
By Saskia Walker, Ralf Hechelmann
World premiere