One thing that several German(-ish) films at the Toronto International Film Festival 2023 had in common is that they were "road movies" of sorts (in general, lots of driving, also in Radu Jude's Romanian political satire Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World, starring Nina Hoss). Start your engines...
Perfect Days by Wim Wenders: Starting with the non-German "German film" at TIFF3. In the by the Dusseldorf veteran filmmaker of road movies like Alice in the Cities and previous Tokyo homages like Tokyo-Ga, we get to follow CAnnes Best Actor Koji Yakusho as a contented toilet cleaner as he drives (and in his off-time bikes) around Tokyo, showing us its highways but more so it's bars and bath houses. The jury is still out in how far Perfect Days is an evolution or departure from Wenders' earlier road movies, as an audience member wondered in the Q&A after the North American premiere (see photo).
Not A Word by Hanna Slak: "We've already broken everything, or can you think of something else?" says the teenage son to his overburdened mother. The Slovenian-born Berlin-based writer-director sends single-parent conductor Nina and her troubled son Lars on a road trip from Berlin to a remote corner of Brittany after dramatic events at school. The trip, set to Mahler's haunting 5th which Nina was rehearsing for her big break before her seething domestic crisis escalated, brilliantly underscores the mother-son journey cum suspenseful thriller (with a somewhat deflated ending). Tár will come to mind when watching, but Not A Word holds its own with two relentless leads, the tug of war of familial tension, and aptly Gothically brooding camerawork. Life was somewhat mirroring fiction when actors Maren Eggert and Jona Levin Nicolai's flight from the US got cancelled because of a storm warning and they got in a car to drive themselves to Toronto from New York just in time for their premiere.
Arthur & Diana by Sara Summa: This must be what Christian Petzold meant when during promoting his latest film Afire referring to the genre of French and Italian "summer films". The Berlin-based and -educated French-Italian director takes her (real-life) brother and (real-life) toddler son on a road trip from Berlin to Paris to visit family, with some interruptions and encounters along the way. The light auto-fictional set-up develops depths the longer the three are on their way. The real star of the show is 4-year-old Lupo, who was on hand on stage at TIFF23, enjoying his feature film debut.
Music by Angela Schanelec: A Southern European summer film (not with usual Schanelec actor Maren Eggert) of a different kind. The Berlin School director has four young people drive around coastal Greece when an accident happens that leads to, in every respect, Greek tragedy.
Achilles by Farhad Delaram: Delaram, effectively in exile at the Berlin Film Academy, managed to make a beautiful feature film in his home country of Iran. The story has a young filmmaker currently working in a hospital take a mental patient out for a ride to find out who she really is, asking where would you go if you were set free after being imprisoned. You will notice the outstanding music by Mehrdad Jafari Raad, in exile in Toronto, where he just finished his composition studies. Delaram received a New Directors Award nomination at the San Sebastian Festival earlier this year and is definitely one to watch.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Jutta Brendemuhl
