The most exciting German film news (again) comes out of Canada. Legendary German actors Bruno Ganz (“Wings of Desire”, Hitler in “Downfall”), Gunter Lamprecht (“Berlin Alexanderplatz”) and Heinz Lieven (most recently in Sorrentino’s Cannes entry “Cheyenne”) will all star in Atom Egoyan’s new thriller “Remember”, alongside the film’s lead, no less legendary hometown boy Christopher Plummer, fresh from his 2012 Oscar for “Beginners”.
The film, about to start shooting in Toronto, follows a man’s hunt for a Nazi war criminal who killed his family.
Staying on subject with German 20th century history --ample fodder for German and international films--, Berlin auteur Christian
Petzold is working on “Phoenix” for a potential fall release as writer-director with his
outstanding "Barbara" cast Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld, plus one of my new favourite actors, Nina Kunzendorf. (If you want to revisit “Barbara”, we’ll show it again this fall). Here Hoss is a Holocaust survivor who returns home to find her husband with another woman.
The younger generation, as represented by Dietrich Brüggemann, who just won a Berlinale Silver Bear with his intense church critique "Stations of the Cross“, announced as his next project a “comedy about neo-Nazis” who get their hands on a country. Part of his motivation: "There hasn't been any good political satire since 'Schtonk'" by Helmut Dietl in 1992. If you liked our recent screening of “Hotel Lux”, you might go for this.
While we’re still waiting for Fatih
Akin’s Canadian-shot "The Cut“ after he pulled it from Cannes –fingers crossed for TIFF--, Epd mag already announced his
next project as "Aus dem Nichts“ (roughly “Out of Nowhere”). The film apparently follows German-Turkish Ilias, who faces xenophobia and hatred in his job as a train ticket collector. Increasingly desperate, he plans a bloody attack to take a stand against racism.
And while we’re waiting for Wim
Wenders’ Canadian-shot “Everything is Fine” –fingers crossed for TIFF-, he was just
in Cannes —
winning Un Certain Regard with his documentary "The Salt of the Earth“ and criticizing the festival for ignoring German films (true): "I just don’t understand it, given the options that were out there. I can’t put it any other way: Cannes has lost its sensitivity for German film,“ he told Focus Magazine frankly. Wenders was at Cannes in 1976 and the last German to win the Palme D’Or in 1984 with "Paris, Texas”. Also in his Cannes luggage: A Magnum ice-cream commercial called
“Celebrate the Moment,” which pairs up two not unattractive people: Austrian-German actor Elyas M’Barek (“Fack Ju Göhte”) and model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
And should
Andreas Dresen's latest book-turned-film "Als wir träumten" (see my
previous mention) be ready in time, this could be the best German TIFF ever (& I might be getting carried away here).
While we’re waiting for Werner
Herzog’s "Queen of the Desert“ (still announced for 2015), he is on to “Vernon God Little”, based on the Booker Prize-winning coming-of-age novel of a school yard murder and its fall-out. The cast is astounding, even by Herzog standards: Mike Tyson, Pamela Anderson and Russel Brand among others.
The first major female filmmaker news I get to deliver today is
Maren Ade (“Everyone Else”) working on "Toni Erdmann“ with Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, fresh from her German Film Award. As writer-director, Ade describes a father’s unsual attempt to rouse his grown-up daughter’s humour. Winfried visits daughter Ines in Bukarest, who isn’t thrilled. After a fight, he returns as an odd business coach. Father and daughter soon find out that they only get closer as they go up against each other.
One of the big names, albeit hardly auteur, I saved for last.
Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”, “The Day After Tomorrow”) has been taking some flak for announcing his “Stonewall” project, the true story of the infamous 1969 anti-homosexual police raid of New York's Stonewall Hotel. (Oh, and “Independence Day II” is coming in 2016).
I’ll leave you with updates on our very own Daniel Brühl, who continues to be on a Hollywood roll. We just showed him pre-mega stardom in the German rom-com “Lila, Lila” at GOETHE FILMS, while he is learning his lines for
“The Woman in Gold”, directed by Simon Curtis ("My Week With Marilyn”), starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. It’s the story of Maria Altmann, an elderly Jewish refugee who worked with lawyer Randol Schoenberg to take on the Austrian government –Brühl plays an Austrian official, I hope he remembers his dialect coach’s number from playing Niki Lauda in “Rush”-- to recover art treasures she believed rightfully belonged to her family, but were stolen by the Nazis. The story of course couldn’t be more current after the recent death of (the real) controversial art collector Gurlitt in Munich, who left the world with a treasure trove of artworks and a huge moral and legal conundrum. See also “Monuments Men”.
We still have two Brühl prescriptions this year: In
Michael Winterbottom's “The Face of an Angel” in the dizzying company of Kate Beckinsale and Cara Delevingne, delving into the Amanda Knox case. And in
Anton Corbijn's UK political thriller “A Most Wanted Man” with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and German actors Nina Hoss, Martin Wuttke and Kostja Ullmann, out this September. Can’t wait.
That's a wrap. I'm off to the Berlin Biennale. See you back here in late August for TIFF-mania. Happy summer!
by Jutta Brendemuehl
image: Bruno Ganz at a film premiere in Essen in 2011 (RF photo Loui der Colli)
