This week, the 66th Berlinale will take over the German capital and as I am packing my bags, let's frame the best of 2016 with Dieter Kosslick's 25 must-see films of all times:
Kosslick (67), the accomplished director of the Berlinale for the past 14 years, recommends 25 must-see German films. The list is not arranged by box office success, but purely cinematic criteria.
► Nosferatu
Director: F. W. Murnau, 1922
Love and death at the break of dawn. The mother of all vampire movies. Horror at its best, shot in Wismar, on the Baltic coast.
► Metropolis
Director: Fritz Lang, 1925/1926
Gigantic: a vision of the future by the great Fritz Lang, the most famous German film of all time. We showed the restored version for the 60th Berlinale at the Brandenburg Gate!
► Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Director: Walter Ruttmann, 1927
From morning until midnight: the city in the Roaring Twenties. Strong images, fascinating montages, a bold experiment.
► The Blue Angel
Director: Josef von Sternberg, 1929
The professor and the call girl in a steamy genre picture from the German province. The film that launched Marlene Dietrich’s international career.
► Murderers Among Us
Director: Wolfgang Staudte, 1946
Fierce reckoning with perpetrators who prefer to forget their war crimes. The first German post-war film, bold, exciting and true. Lead actress Hildegard Knef’s launch to world fame.
► Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser
Director: Gerhard Klein, 1957
Youth in East Berlin, teetering between rebellion and conformity. Screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase wrote film history with it.
► The Bridge
Director: Bernhard Wicki, 1959
A gripping film about the final days of the war: relentless and full of sorrow over a lost generation.
► Trace of Stones
Director: Frank Beyer, 1966
Manfred Krug in the Wild East – a long-banned East German DEFA film, chock full of life, spirit and wit.
► Born in '45
Director: Jürgen Böttcher, 1966 (premiered in 1990)
Tender, intimate portrait of young people in East Berlin that seems to have been dappled with a paintbrush. The only feature film by the renowned painter Strawalde.
► The Tin Drum
Director: Volker Schlöndorff, 1979
Guenter Grass meets Volkaer Schlöndorff: a thick novel, brought to the screen with great force and wit. A tour de force that was crowned with an Oscar.
► I Was Nineteen
Director: Konrad Wolf, 1968
Meticulous report about the last days of World War II from the perspective of a young German ex-soldier returning from Soviet exile. The ultimate masterpiece by Konrad Wolf.
► The Legend of Paul and Paula
Director: Heiner Carow, 1973
Go to her and fly your kite... About happiness in the backyard: a love story at its best.
► Fitzcarraldo
Director: Werner Herzog, 1982
Stunning jungle odyssey with Klaus Kinski as an ingenious madman. Spectacular cinematic piece with never-before-seen images.
► The Marriage of Maria Braun
Director: R. W. Fassbinder, 1979
Bitter farewell to Germany in year zero. Fassbinder and Hanna Schygulla: forever the dream couple of German cinema.
► Solo Sunny
Director: Konrad Wolf, 1980
The portrait of a headstrong young woman who refuses to be tamed. The most beautiful plea for individuality to come out of the DEFA, the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic.
► Das Boot
Director: Wolfgang Petersen, 1981
Fast-paced and perfectly cast: the legend of a war-time submarine crew.
► Run Lola Run
Director: Tom Tykwer, 1998
Fresh, fast, confident and free: the return of German film to the world’s movie theatres.
► Winter ade
Director: Helke Misselwitz, 1988
Women in search of happiness and security. A documentary that brought the GDR to its knees.
► The State I Am In
Director: Christian Petzold, 2000
A teenager’s critical view of her Red Army Faction-generation parents, a tragedy of self-delusion and idealism.
► Marianne & Juliane
Director: Margarethe von Trotta, 1981
Two sisters find and lose one another. The political and the personal in a touching social panorama.
► Good Bye Lenin!
Director: Wolfgang Becker, 2003
Katrin Sass in a coma. From the Berlinale around the world: the best Fall-of-the-Wall comedy.
► Grill Point
Director: Andreas Dresen, 2002
Two couples in the maelstrom of their passions, entanglements and complexities of everyday life compacted in a splendid tragicomedy.
► Alice in the Cities
Director: Wim Wenders, 1974
A man and a girl on an odyssey through the West German Ruhr region. Wim Wenders’s first world-wide success.
►Head-On
Director: Fatih Akin, 2004
Love and despair in the third generation of Turks in Germany: punk, rock ‘n’ roll, a roller coaster of emotions that was awarded the Golden Bear.
► Victoria
Director: Sebastian Schipper, 2015
One night, one morning in Berlin: a blend of romance and crime thriller, two uncut hours that are seamless. An experiment that brought the Berlinale to a boil.
courtesy Dieter Kosslick. Published in German 30 September 2015 in Bildzeitung.
image: DAS BOOT poster
