German Film Festival: Tips please

In the spirit of an earlier post addressing the French Film Festival, I’m now repeating my bleg, this time for the German Film Festival. Just to recap, this is an extract of what I said there.

Film festivals are great things. Yet in my case I see them come, think “I’d like to go to some of those movies” and an awful lot of the time I don’t manage to make it. We have two sectors – the commercial sector that advertises its little head off and serves up dreck and then festivals, which are full of gems, and if they’re not gems there are lots of interesting movies. But they come and go and the movies never get the time to get word of mouth going about them.  And the main alternative source of information is the festival catalogue – which like most marketing may give you information, but they want you to go, so you can’t trust them when they say what a great movie something is.

So if someone can rustle up a film critic for Troppo that would be just fine.  And would anyone like to make any recommendations of what films I should see in the coming Film Festival and explain why?

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Martin C. Jones
12 years ago

“Hotel Lux” is a good tragicomedy: Michael “Bully” Herbig is a very successful comedian, and the film has received several awards and nominations.
(If you like it, “Robert Zimmermann Is Tangled up in Love” is an earlier film from the same director also showing.)

International politics wonks should check out “Joscka and Mr Fischer”; he’s a fascinating documentary subject.

If you’re into football (soccer) and or Daniel Brühl, “Lessons of a Dream” could be interesting. If not, this probably isn’t your thing.

“Men in the City” was a big hit a few years ago, and “Men in the City 2” is (unsurprisingly) the sequel. Mainstream German comedy with several well-known actors. Not my thing, but neither is much mainstream Anglo comedy.

“Three” I’ll probably go see simply based on its director: Tom Tykwer. (Tykwer also did Run Lola Run, and Perfume – Story of a Murderer.)

Jill
12 years ago

Saw ‘Sleeping Sickness’at MIFF last year – definitely not for everyone but I thought it was interesting. The program looks good – pity they’re not repeating the screening more than once or twice of most films – the times are a bit limiting.

Have a number of picks but will definitely try to see ‘Stopped on Track’ because I loved Dresen’s last film ‘Cloud Nine’.

Stephen Hill
Stephen Hill
12 years ago

Just came back from a German Film festival event, I’d recommend “Fraulein and the Sandman” or is it just called “the Sandman,” which as the title attests loosely draws on E.T.A. Hoffman’s mythological fable. I thought it was very well made film, clever and sprightly with a fascinating mediation on fantasticism, about a character whose body exudes sand and who finds his world tipped upside down by the emanations of his strange dream-life. It takes a good film-maker to execute a fabricated reality narrative -it can all too easily get overblown and lose all bearings to anything interesting, but luckily in this case there is enough subtlety and sophistication to pull it off. I’d write more but I need some sleep.

Stephen Hill
Stephen Hill
12 years ago

i’ll second the recommendation for “Sleeping Sickness’ – a sort of modern day Conradian “Heart of Darkness” based around a different sort of colonial arrogance with an interesting twist.

Jill
12 years ago

Saw ‘Stopped on Track’ on Saturday. It may get a commercial release because it won some awards on the weekend in Germany. It’s gruelling and true. It combines all the wretchedness, tedium and sadness that accompanies a slow death. And i think the audience feels these three qualities in equla measure, with a couple of light moments thrown in. Very powerful. Great acting. Sone irony at the expense of the health profession (I think – may not have been intended).