“With six full-length fictional, three documentary and two medium-long fictional films, new German directorial talents are making a strong showing with distinctive works in Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2013,” announces the Berlin International Film Festival. The lineup, with descriptions from the festival, running from February 7 through 17:
Chiralia, by Santiago Gil, a short.
DeAD, by Sven Halfar, an “exquisite pulp fiction from Hamburg: following his mother’s suicide, cool Patrick (Tilman Strauß) shows up at his unknown father’s 60th birthday party and immediately makes it clear that things are about to escalate.”
Die mit dem Bauch tanzen (Dancing with Bellies), by Carolin Genreith, who “takes an intimate look at getting older and a ‘magic weapon’ against it: belly dancing.”
Einzelkämpfer (I Will Not Lose), by Sandra Kaudelka, who, “once a competitive East German athlete herself, tells of former top GDR athletes” in her documentary.
Endzeit (End of Time), by Sebastian Fritzsch “depicts survival after a catastrophe, when a young woman (Anne von Keller) turns hunter to still her hunger.”
Freier Fall (Free Fall), by Stephan Lacant, the opening film. “Max Riemelt (Kay), Katharina Schüttler (Bettina) and Hanno Koffler (Marc) are the protagonists in a love triangle, in which Marc and Bettina are expecting a child at the same time as Marc falls in love with his colleague Kay.”
Kalifornia, by Laura Mahlberg, the second short.
Metamorphosen, by Sebastian Mez, a documentary “about the widely forgotten but still highly radioactive area around the Mayak nuclear facility in the southern Urals.”
Silvi, by Nico Sommer, “unmistakably set in Berlin. In it the 47-year-old title character (Lina Wendel) starts afresh after separating from her partner.”
Die Wiedergänger (The Revenants), by Andreas Bolm, who “avoids presenting the world in documentary form, but instead seeks the point where fiction begins. The outcome is an artistically austere film about loss and eternal return.”
Zwei Mütter (Two Mothers), by Anne Zohra Berrached “portrays in an almost documentary style a couple’s wish for a child (Sabine Wolf and Karina Plachetka) and their discovery that most sperm banks do not provide services to same-sex couples.”
More on the 2013 lineups: Sundance (rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and Slamdance, Rotterdam (rounds 1, 2, 3, 4) and Berlin (rounds 1, 2, 3).
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