How often do we get to see German films? They rarely turn up outside of specialist film festivals and, even then, the German variety often don’t carry the same cachet as, say, their French or Italian counterparts.
But they should, especially with this year’s line-up of the German Film Festival (May 9 to 29 in Brisbane and May 15 to June 5 in Adelaide), featuring some compelling cinema.
A couple of films which this reviewer has seen and can highly recommend are Not a Word and Dark Satellites.
Not a Word (Kein Wort) is an atmospheric piece examining the troubled relationship between Nina (Maren Eggert), an orchestra conductor, and her taciturn teenage son Lars (Jona Levin Nicolai).
Something terrible has happened to a child at Lars’s school and after Lars himself has an accident – but was it really an accident? – Nina offers to take him away for a few days. Every time she tries to find out what’s troubling her son and it looks like he might be about to open up to her, her phone suddenly demands her attention.
The pair end up going to a seaside town of apparently happy vacationers, but it’s winter now and the landscape looks as heavy and dismal as their mood. Even the boat they used for sailing remains stranded and broken on the beach where they left it.
Nina is very troubled by some of Lars’ behaviour, but she has to juggle how to deal with him while worrying about an upcoming concert, for which she’s missing rehearsals.
Polish director Hanna Antonina Wojcik Slak wrote this brooding piece, which doesn’t necessarily go in the directions you think it will.
It’s been a long while since the heyday of Nastassja Kinski (of Tess and Paris, Texas fame in the late ’70s and early 1980s), so fans should enjoy director Thomas Stuber’s Dark Satellites (Die stillen Trabanten).
In a loose adaptation of stories by Clemens Meyer, Kinski is part of an impressive ensemble cast playing people who are looking to ward off loneliness in the nightlife of Leipzig. She plays Birgitt, a hairdresser, who forms an emotional bond with Christa (Martina Gedeck), a cleaner who’s had a tough day at work. Birgitt comforts Christa, with their initial friendliness evolving into a slow-burning exercise in sensual connection.
Then there’s security guard Erik (Charly Hübner), who comes across a young Ukrainian woman named Marika (Irina Starshenbaum) on a swing in a park at night. We’re not sure at first what his interest is in her as they strike up a conversation and she tells him about losing her family in the war.
Like Marike, Hamed (Adel Bencherif) and Aischka (Lilith Stangenberg) have fled to another country looking for a better life. But Aischka’s late-night smoking sessions on the balcony of her building with café owner Jens (Albrecht Schuch) threaten to put both her marriage and Jens’s friendship with her husband at risk.
These three stories have no crossover of characters but the thematic link of connections in the darkness of night is sufficient to form a cohesive and satisfying whole.
Kinski’s father, the late Klaus Kinski, turns up in the chilling Nosferatu the Vampire (Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht), Fitzcarraldo, and Aguirre, The Wrath of God, all part of a focus on the legendary director, Werner Herzog.
Herzog afficionados will also want to make sure to see the 2022 documentary about him and his unusual methods in Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer.
To celebrate 70 years of German cinema abroad, German Films is also featuring a retrospective that includes acclaimed works such as a 4K restoration of Jacob the Liar (Jakob der Lügner) – the only East German Foreign Language Film to be nominated at the Academy Awards – and The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun), directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, plus others from the German film canon.
Opening Night in Brisbane on May 9 sees director Andreas Dresen attend a Q&A session about his moving biographical film, From Hilde, With Love (In Liebe, Eure Hilde), about Hilde Coppi, who along with her partner, became involved with the anti-Nazi resistance movement in 1942.
Closing Night in Brisbane on May 29 looks like a fascinating choice with Treasure, starring Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry as a music journalist and her Polish father, a Holocaust survivor, who set out on a tour of their family homeland. Directed and co-written by Julia von Heinz, the film is an adaptation of Australian author Lily Brett’s award-winning book, Too Many Men.
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And let’s not forget kids and teens. The Goethe Institut is once again presenting a section titled Kino For Kids, with one of the highlights being a new Lassie film.
What’s that, you say? Lassie at a German Film Festival? Well, yes. Following on from 2020’s reimagining of the smart Border Collie in Lassie – An Adventurous Journey from Hanno Olderdissen, is Lassie – A New Adventure (Lassie – ein neues Abenteuer). It stars Nico Marischka as a boy who joins Lassie to help solve a recent spate of dognappings, in what promises to be a rollicking action movie as Lassie comes to the rescue against bungling criminals.
The German Film Festival, May 9-29, Palace James Street and Palace Barracks cinemas, Brisbane; and May 15 to June 5, Palace Nova Eastend and Prospect cinemas, Adelaide
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