German Kino - Theatrical Films

The Best of the German Film Scene


Scherbentanz directed by Chris Kraus	CLICK ON THE ABOVE IMAGE FOR AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ARNO FRISCH WHO STARS IN BLACKOUT JOURNEY	CLICK ON THE ABOVE IMAGE FOR AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH STEFFI KUEHNERT WHO STARS IN IM SCHWITZKASTEN

A Selection of Theatrical Films This Month on German Kino

Im Schwitzkasten:

The recession's got the people in a headlock. They are grapping, struggling, sweating, but there's no escape. And while they are sweating, why not really sweat? So Toni, Karin, Dani, Monika and Norbert meet regularly every Thursday in the Berlin sauna "Schwitzkasten" (Sweatbox), run by the sister and brother team Nadine and Jost, to brood over the situation in the country and life in general while wallowing in mud pack and massage. Toni, long-term jobless and impotent, has lost all confidence to return to his old profession. Karin, who has opened her own business, makes a nuisance of herself by trying to sell useless things to anyone who crossed her path. Stewardess Dani, who thinks the best is just about good enough for her, finds out that the world runs on different time shen she's out of work. Monika, incorrigible do-godder, has enjoyed an academic education with the result that she goes on social welfare until she decides wether to marry and have kids or teach sewing to women in Rwanda. And finally there's Norbert, the Goethe expert who writes the speeches for his wife, a liberal member of parliament. The microcosm of the sauna opens his eyes to the world as it really is. Will he at least have the courage to do something about it?

Blackout Journey:

The temperamental Mio is a young and talented musician whose dream of taking over a recording studio is suddenly within reach. He just needs to come up with a load of cash in the next few days
Mio's girlfriend Stella convinces him to cash in a compensation payment being held for Mio since the tragic killing of his parents at the hands of terrorists when he was a child. This means they have to locate his long lost brother Valentin. Valentin was traumatized as a child by their parents' death, and unconsciously keeps the dangerous memories at bay. He doesn't remember the shooting, nor that he has a brother.
After finding Valentin, the three travel to Vienna where they must sign for the money. Before they arrive, however, Mio must force his brother to confront the past and remember. Impatient, Mio makes the situation worse and succeeds only in infuriating Stella, who storms off. Mio and Valentin rush after her to the airport. Once again at the scene of his parent's murder, Valentin's hidden memories rush out in a storm of psychotic emotions that threaten to submerge them all

Scherbentanz:

Invited to his father's mansion for a party, Jesko is enraged to discover that the invitation is a bold deception. He has leukemia, and his father and brother Ansgar are hoping that a bone-marrow transplant from his long-lost mother might save him. Sullen and self-pitying, Jesko has no desire to see his mother, who during her swift descent into schizophrenia many years ago had almost killed him and Ansgar. Once beautiful, her illness had transformed her into a despairing shell of a woman. Stifling his impulse to flee, Jesko nevertheless alienates himself from his family with his sarcastic abuse. When her bone-marrow proves unsuitable, his mother, in a moment of clarity and spurred by an instinctive love for her son, reveals the painful secret which could be the only alternative left for Jesko – his father's illegitimate child. Reluctant to believe the charge, he confronts his father. Now Jesko is forced to recognize that his father would rather sacrifice him than endanger his bourgeois façade. Jesko and his mother search for evidence, but they are discovered by his father and brother and angrily expelled from the estate. Defiantly returning, Jesko crashes a party taking place in the mansion. Suddenly he sees his mother entering the ballroom on the arm of a young man he has never met...

All About Bob:

A perfect pair ...??
Bob is in his mid twenties, Barbara is in her late thirties
Bob goes with the flow, Barbara knows exactly where she is going
Bob is a swinging single, Barbara is a single mother Bob is a ladies man, Barbara needs a handyman Bob is getting married soon, Married is what Barbara was
Bob is all about fun, Barbara is ready to run
Bob is all about play, Barbara just wants him to go away

Baader:

The rebellious youth of the Sixties, aided by an idealistic and drug-enhanced openness, poured out into the streets by the thousands to protest against the System and the war in Vietnam. For some, this idealistic movement was not enough: they became active and violent revolutionaries, organizing such terrorist groups as the Black Panthers and the Red Brigades. In Germany, a young and disaffected radical by the name of Andreas Baader was soon to become the leader of one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in Europe, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, later known as the Red Army Faction.

Mr. Woof:

The young Max lives with his father, a pharmacist, and wishes that his mom were still alive. So when the attractive Verena rents the upstairs apartment and catches his father's eye, Max is far from pleased.
One day his dad receives a mysterious growth potion that he tries out on his neighbor's farm. It doesn't work, but the potion has a strange side effect - it turns all the animals into humans!
When Woof, the stray dog that Max has found on the farm and taken as a pet, turns into a man, the quick-thinking boy hatches a plan: He'll get Verena interested in Woof...and she'll forget all about his dad.
However, although now human, Woof still barks, howls at the moon and sniffs around where a man really shouldn't - and Max's plan backfires. Then, when Max's dad tries to explain the magic potion, Verena thinks he's crazy and hastily flees with a broken heart. But Woof, human or not, still has the chance to prove exactly why a dog really is a man's best friend...

Scherbentanz: "A tale, seemingly from another era. Of adolescent wildness of emotions, on the brink of madness yet filled with tormenting sorrow, of longing for true love and the inevitable farewell to youth." - Volker Schlöndorff
Invited to his father's mansion for a party, Jesko is enraged to discover that the invitation is a bold deception. He has leukemia, and his father and brother Ansgar are hoping that a bone marrow transplant from his long-lost mother might save him. Sullen and self-pitying, Jesko has no desire to see his mother, who during her swift descent into schizophrenia many years ago had almost killed him and Ansgar. Once beautiful, her illness had transformed her into a despairing shell of a woman.
Stifling his impulse to flee, Jesko nevertheless alienates himself from his family with his sarcastic abuse. When her bone-marrow proves unsuitable, his mother, in a moment of clarity and spurred by an instinctive love for her son, reveals the painful secret which could be the only alternative left for Jesko - his father's illegitimate child. Reluctant to believe the charge, he confronts his father.
Now Jesko is forced to recognize that his father would rather sacrifice him than endanger his bourgeois façade. Jesko and his mother search for evidence, but they are discovered by his father and brother and angrily expelled from the estate. Defiantly returning, Jesko crashes a party taking place in the mansion.
Suddenly he sees his mother entering the ballroom on the arm of a young man he has never met before.

Blackout Journey:The temperamental Mio is a young and talented musician whose dream of taking over a recording studio is suddenly within reach. He just needs to come up with a load of cash in the next few days. Mio's girlfriend Stella convinces him to cash in a compensation payment being held for Mio since the tragic killing of his parents at the hands of terrorists when he was a child. This means they have to locate his long lost brother Valentin. Valentin was traumatized as a child by their parents' death, and unconsciously keeps the dangerous memories at bay. He doesn't remember the shooting, nor that he has a brother.
After finding Valentin, the three travel to Vienna where they must sign for the money. Before they arrive, however, Mio must force his brother to confront the past and remember. Impatient, Mio makes the situation worse and succeeds only in infuriating Stella, who storms off. Mio and Valentin rush after her to the airport.
Once again at the scene of his parent's murder, Valentin's hidden memories rush out in a storm of psychotic emotions that threaten to submerge them all.

Im Schwitzkasten: The recession's got the people in a headlock. They are grapping, struggling, sweating, but there's no escape. And while they are sweating, why not really sweat? So Toni, Karin, Dani, Monika and Norbert meet regularly every Thursday in the Berlin sauna "Schwitzkasten" (Sweatbox), run by the sister and brother team Nadine and Jost, to brood over the situation in the country and life in general while wallowing in mud pack and massage. Toni, long-term jobless and impotent, has lost all confidence to return to his old profession. Karin, who has opened her own business, makes a nuisance of herself by trying to sell useless things to anyone who crossed her path. Stewardess Dani, who thinks the best is just about good enough for her, finds out that the world runs on different time shen she's out of work. Monika, incorrigible do-godder, has enjoyed an academic education with the result that she goes on social welfare until she decides wether to marry and have kids or teach sewing to women in Rwanda. And finally there's Norbert, the Goethe expert who writes the speeches for his wife, a liberal member of parliament. The microcosm of the sauna opens his eyes to the world as it really is. Will he at least have the courage to do something about it?

Der Vulkan: The screen version of Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" brought Klaus Maria Brandauer international recognition and its director a Best Foreign Film Oscar. "Der Vulkan", based on another of his novels is set in the Paris émigré community during the Nazi era. Berlin 1937. The fascists in Germany are steadily gaining power. Marion von Kammer looks on helplessly as the Nazis destroy the small theatre in which she sings. She escapes to Zurich with her sister Tilly and their mother. Then Marion moves on to Paris to join other German émigrés who have settled there and, together with her writer friend Martin, spreads anti-fascist propaganda from an illegal German radio station. But the fascists' influence is far-reaching. The radio station is raided and closed down by French police. Martin loses all interest in the political struggle and is killed by drugs and alcohol. And Tilly, having heard that the love of her life has been killed by the Nazi's, has no reason to go on and commits suicide.
Angry and bitter towards the Europe who has stolen so much that is dear to her, Marion manages to escape to the USA and gives passionate speeches denouncing Hitler and his atrocious regime.

Blueprint:

Sometime in the near future...
Years ago, the world famous pianist and composer Iris Sellen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Determined not to let her musical talent die with her, she convinced the ambitious scientist Dr. Fischer to produce a clone of herself, her daughter Siri. When Siri finds out at the age of thirteen that she is her mother's clone, her whole world falls apart. The once very close and sweet relationship between mother and daughter turns into an emotional struggle. They fight for the same man, compete with their musical careers, and nearly pay with their lives.
Learn More about Blueprint

Barfuss:

Nick Keller is the black sheep of his family. He loses one job after another. His step-father Heinrich and his brother Viktor consider him a looser. Only his mother really believes in him. At his new job in a psychiatric clinic, Nick prevents a young woman, Leila, from committing suicide at the last minute. When Nick leaves the clinic that evening, she secretly follows him and shows up in his kitchen in the middle of the night: wearing a nightgown and barefoot.
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Der alte Affe Angst:

A modern love story - as unusual as life itself. Angst is the story of a sensitive film director, Robert, and his beautiful girlfriend Marie, a doctor in a children's clinic. Their different attitudes toward life lead the two to constant fights and conflicts. When Robert finds out that his father is terminally ill, he feels guilty for not having taken more care of him. Marie tries to help, but when his father dies, Robert falls into a downward spiral of despair. He looks for solace in his work and in one-night stands with prostitutes. When Marie finds out that Robert has betrayed her, she leaves him. However, her love for Robert and her realization that to love someone also means one must be able to forgive, offer hope for a new beginning between the two.
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Durch diese Nacht:

Through this Night follows the last days of a writer – Bozena Nemcová – who dared to live her life freely, and that in the 19th century. She fights for love, for her family and for her life. And as long as she writes, she has the power and the will to live. Truth, hallucination, dreams and memories entangle to create a unique film reality.
Learn More about Through This Night

Oktoberfest:

No, this is not the Paris Hilton Oktoberfest! This Oktoberfest tells of people who meet on the last day of the Oktoberfest, lose one another, and then find each other again. These little and big stories track individual destinies drawn to one another, converging at the festival.
Learn More about Oktoberfest

Der Fischer und seine Frau:

Doris Dorrie's modern variation on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale explores the many sides of love, its highs, humor and heartaches, with warmth and wit.
Ida and Otto meet in rural Japan. She is a young fabric designer traveling the country in search of inspiration and ideas. He is one of the 'Flying Fish Doctors' buying koi for wealthy collectors in Germany. It's love at first sight and they marry in a traditional Japanese ceremony. Back in Germany, everyday life begins to take its toll as Ida's career takes an upturn. Otto is perfectly content in the here and now – 'love is all you need' - whereas Ida only seems happy when she's making plans. Otto struggles to assist Ida in making her dreams come true and ends up neglecting his own career as a veterinary doctor. When Ida becomes pregnant, it is Otto who stays home to raise their child, freeing Ida to pursue her ever-expanding ambitions. The more successful Ida is, the more frustrated she is with Otto's lack of luster. Her fashions, based on the patterns of Otto's big passion, kois, soon become the latest international fashion rage but Ida still isn't satisfied. She wants it all. But the more Otto gives up, the more she holds it against him and the more forlorn he becomes - a vicious circle that spirals out of control. Their love, once so perfect, is on the verge of self-destructing.

Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe:

The composer Mimi Nachtigal and the singer Venus Morgenstern fall madly in love with each other, fight for seven years, and then break up. After their separation, they both come to the painful realization that they each have lost the love of their life. At first, they try to drown their sorrows in two very different, but pragmatic ways: Venus takes on a new boyfriend, Mimi kills himself. But when it finally occurs to them – for Mimi in the afterworld and for Venus in the here and now – that they simply cannot be without each other, it almost seems too late. Desperate but unswerving in her belief in love, a love that goes even beyond death, Venus descends into the underworld, like Orpheus, to find and bring back her lost love.

One Day in Europe:

Four stories that take place in different cities on the day of the Champions League Final Match between Galatasaray Istanbul und Deportivo La Coruña in Moscow.
"West Meets East": Moscow. An elderly Russian woman comes to the aid of a young English woman who's been robbed. They go to the police to report the robbery, but the policemen are busy keeping rivaling football fans from attacking one another. 1:0 for Depor.
"Germans in the Orient": Istanbul. To get insurance money, a young German backpacker pretends he's been robbed. At the police station, everything runs according to plan... until he becomes acquainted with the methods of the Turkish police. Galatasaray shoots a goal and ties the score.
"The Pilgrim and the Native": Santiago de Compostela. A Hungarian history professor on a pilgrimage is robbed of his camera. He asks a policeman for help, but the man is much more interested in how people talk in Hungary - is it similar to Finnish? More important, it's time for Siesta. The teams are tied.
"Exception culturelle": Berlin. Two French street artists who are continually broke decide to report their luggage as stolen to get the insurance money. The German police are very helpful, but unfortunately not very naive...The teams are tied, it comes down to a penalty shootout.

Das Wunder von Bern

Summer, 1954. The Soviet Union is sending its prisoners of war home. Among them is the father of a quiet, football-loving 11-year-old, Matthias, who lives with his mother, sister and brother in a West-German mining town. The boy has long found a surrogate father in the local football player Helmut Rahn, who has "adopted" Matthias as his mascot. The return of the boy's father Richard casts a shadow over the once-happy family: broken by his years in captivity, Richard has trouble adapting to life in post-war Germany and alienates his family through his severity. For Richard, football is pointless, and so is the World Cup that's about to be held in Bern, Switzerland. Matthias, however, longs to be there with his idol, who's been chosen to play on the German team. Through his passion for the game and his fighting spirit, Matthias rekindles a love of life in his dad's heart. And so, as the final match of the World Cup begins, a little miracle of love and generosity leaps across borders to help another miracle occur – the victory of Helmut Rahn and the German team, the miracle of Bern. With The Miracle of Bern, director and ex-football player Sönke Wortmann (Little Sharks, Maybe, not) has brilliantly succeeded in setting an intensely emotional and touching family drama against the exhilarating, authentic background of West Germany's miraculous World Cup victory in 1954.

Adam and Eva

Married four years already, Adam and Eve are bored – until temptation creeps into their lives. Since this is the 21^st century, they yield to it with gusto and come up with some provocative new ideas that turn their fading Garden of Eden into a spicy Garden of Cool. Is there life after a Happy End? This is the question eating away at Adam, who saved a beautiful young woman named Eve from a fire four years ago and married her – a fairy tale come true. But instead of living happily ever after, Adam is bored with Eve's predictability and housewifely ways. Eve, in turn, is annoyed with Adam's lack of fire and spontaneity, and especially with his reluctance to have kids. When temptation comes their way, they both yield: Adam throws himself into an affair with a sexy young nanny, and Eve falls for a charming, elegant and successful executive – who wants kids. But instead of being banned from paradise, Adam and Eve stay firmly planted where they are. Juggling their consciences, ideals and expectations – not to mention their friends, families and lovers – , they come up with a novel solution that would even make life in the Garden of Eden look unbearably dull…After his cult success "India," young Austrian director Paul Harather now spins a lively romantic tale about a couple who can't live with each other, but can't live without each other either.

Nogo

This movie starts by showing us how the owner of a gas station in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Austrian countryside, meets a young woman in his shop. She immediately falls in love with him and the silence around the station. They immediately start to live together and don't wish to see other people, not even clients. When one day a young couple keeps watching the gas station from a distance, but doesn't do anything wrong, the owners don't know what to think. What they don't know is that the couple wants a gas station of their own. That's when we switch to the lives of the other young couple. We learn that the girl suffers from brain cancer and is about to die. Her final dream is to own a gas station with her husband, but they don't have the money for it. She decides to sell some of her organs now that she is still alive, so that they will finally have some money to purchase their dream. But before it gets that far, her husband gets a better idea, they ask some money in advance and fly to America, where the woman can get an operation. When they return home, they pass the gas station and decide to go and have a talk with the manager... The third story evolves around two people who don't seem to know each other. The first one is a prostitute called Rosa, the other one is a bank robber named Sam. When Rosa's car breaks down on her way to the funeral of her brother, she ends up at the gas station. The car will not be immediately ready and that's where Sam comes in. He's about to rob a bank and is doing the final preparations. One of these things is stealing a fast car. When he is asked to pick Rosa up, it's getting obvious that he hasn't seen her for years, but they know each other quite some time. He wants to help her, drives to the gas station and off to the funeral. But they never make it there because they are too busy with each other. When they stop at a bank on their return home, a gun accidentally falls out of Rosa's purse. The clerk is already convinced that this is a hold-up, so Sam and Rosa make the best out of it and rob the bank. Now that their car is known by the police, they need another one. They go back to the gas station to pick up Rosa's car, where they meet the other two couples...

Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe

The composer Mimi Nachtigal and the singer Venus Morgenstern fall desperately in love, then spend the next seven years fighting until they finally split up. After their separation, they both become painfully aware that they have lost the love of their lives. At first, they attempt practical solutions to overcome their grief. Venus finds a new boyfriend and Mimi kills himself. Even though now in different worlds, they realize the heartbreaking truth that they simply cannot be without each other-but it appears to be too late. Desperate but unwavering in her belief that love is stronger than death, Venus descends, as Orpheus once had, into the forbidding depths of the underworld to retrieve her lost lover. Starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Alexandra Maria Lara and directed by Helmut Dietl.