If Hot Docs’ German selection of the latest and best European documentary filmmaking and the Goethe-Institut series “Peak: German Docs” is not enough for you, there’s more to look forward to in the documentary year 2017, from personal and family stories to political heavy hitters.
B12 (
trailer) picks up the topic of home & belonging that we addressed in March with our series GOETHE FILMS “Heimat NOW”. It is set at a highway restaurant called B12, located on the German Autobahn12 between the Bavarian cities of Passau and Munich. Most people are just passing through, but there are some who found themselves
a home on the road. Christian Lerch’s debut documentary shows the everyday life of people living at the edge of society, in transit.
BTW, Lerch is the screenwriter of GRAVE DECISIONS that we showed as part of “Heimat NOW”.
Her short film I REMEMBER screened at the Berlinale 2015; now Janna Ji Wonders makes her feature debut with WALCHENSEE FOREVER (sneak peek
here), for which the filmmaker was honoured with the Berlinale emerging artist award “MADE IN GERMANY – FÖRDERPREIS PERSPEKTIVE”. In the film, she
portrays her family through the turbulent second half of the 20th century: as young women, her mother Anna and her aunt Frauke, two Bavarian hippies, ran off to America where Frauke ends her life after experimenting with drugs. Shortly after the incident, Anna becomes pregnant with Janna, returns to Germany and becomes a member of writer Rainer Langhans’ infamous harem. Langhans has gone down in history as the most visible member of Germany’s ‘Commune 1’. While the members are on an excessive quest for meaning, Janna falls into an identity crisis. In search for stability, she moves to her down-to-earth grandmother, who lives at Walchensee.
Strong female artists are presented in GIRLS LIKE ME by writer-director Evelyn Schels (GEORG BASELITZ). Here, she portrays Sigalit Landau, an Israeli sculptor and video artist, Iranian superstar filmmaker and photographer Shirin Neshat, German photographer Katharina Sieverding, and Marina Abramović, the famous Serbian-American performance artist.
We are also looking forward to two new docs by Grimme Award winner Marc Wiese, who was at the Goethe-Institut Toronto for a Goethe Film Talk about his celebrated doc CAMP 14 - TOTAL CONTROL ZONE at TIFF 2012.
WAR DIARY is a chronicle about the war in Syria. Since 2012, German reporter Carsten Stormer has been filming the combat zone in this country, not knowing how these experiences will affect him. Now, five years of film footage have become one very personal film, depicting the brutality of war but also the heroism of humankind.
Wiese’s other project is no easier to stomach and deals with one of the most important and most ignored issues of our time: modern slavery. Today, 27 million people are enslaved – the highest number ever in human history. Like 15-year old Sumi from Bangladesh, who works as a seamstress, 13 hours a day, 7 days a week. She makes 30 Euros in one month, not even enough to afford a mattress. SLAVES – MODERN SLAVERY will critically review how each of us supports slavery in our everyday lives.
Yet another critical investigation of our life styles launching on screens this month comes from Andreas Pilcher. A farmer only earns very little money for one litre of milk; the big money goes to industry. In THE MILK SYSTEM, Pilcher looks behind the scenes of the dairy industry, following the development of milk from a natural to a high-tech product, and questioning if our milk system is fair and reasonable.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: promo photo for B12, courtesy Südkino Filmproduktion GmbH
