“In the near future…” could be the motto for Toronto’s Digifest, the annual tech festival organized by the Digital Media and Gaming Incubator at George Brown College. This year's theme, “Hello Tomorrow: Our Creative Cities” is about improving our quality of life and making creative cities of the future better through design, innovation, and technology. Fittingly,
the Goethe-Institut Toronto is bringing Berlin VR curator Tina Sauerländer to introduce some critical global (female) VR positions tackling emotions in first-person shooter video games and a futuristic exploration of human reproduction.
“In the near future…” is also how many sci-fi movies begin – often with a less utopian outlook than Digifest.
One I cannot wait to see when it hits North American Festivals and cinemas is Ulrich Köhler’s “In My Room”, about to premiere in Cannes. Armin is getting too old for his night life habits and the woman he likes. He’s not really happy, but can’t picture living a different life. One morning he wakes up: the world looks the same as always, but mankind has disappeared. “A film about the frightening gift of maximum freedom,” as the tagline promises or rather threatens.
If Digifest's offerings aren't enough for you, there’s an astounding number of futuristic fare to look forward to from Germany, in cinemas "in the near future." Here's the pick the crop:
Ziska Riemann is in post-production for “Electric Girl”, a new kind of female superhero story that interlaces reality and fiction and is written by an all-female crew of Angela Christlieb, Dagmar Gabler, Ziska Riemann, and Luci Van Org.
Twenty-seven-year-old slam poet Mia is celebrated for her spontaneous and unpredictable talent. When she lands a dubbing job in a Japanese animated series, she merges more and more with the role of the blue-haired Kimiko. Suddenly, Mia can see electricity, leap from roofs and save people’s lives. But as Mia’s superpowers grow, so does her awareness of looming danger. Just as in the Kimiko anime, hostile powers are planning to destroy the city, maybe even all of humanity. Only Mia can save the day. And who is really in danger here?
Director Tim Fehlbaum, well known for his previous dark sci-fi feature “Hell,” is in development for “Shipbreaker” – this one “set in the distant future” and produced by Roland Emmerich, who knows a thing or two about the end times (“Independence Day”, “The Day After Tomorrow“). It’s been 200 years that people left earth after it became inhabitable because of a flood disaster. Now a mission has to find out if they can go back home. A female astronaut, shipwrecked on the long-decimated Earth, must decide the fate of the wasteland’s remaining populace. No details or cast yet but this teaser photo by
actress Franziska Herrmann as said astronaut.
Writer-director Dietrich Brüggemann has “Seraphin” in development. Nothing is moving when a woman (30) and her son Seraphin (4) look out of the window one fall day. Civilization has inexplicably come to a halt, everyone is dead, except them. Mother and son start a journey from Berlin to the South in the hope to survive the coming winter.
Kai Gero Lenke’s “Stella Nova” is an interesting case for being a hybrid documentary / fictional sci-fi. Taking the current state of development in the field of biological 3D printing as the departure point for its narrative, the film combines the already possible with a breathtaking vision of the future. An essay on a device unfolds into a feature film treating the dissolution of time, space and identity. Lenke was part of the third Wim Wenders Grant in 2016. The annually awarded grant, endowed with a total of 100,000 euros in project funding, is intended to provide young filmmakers with the necessary autonomy required for the independent and uncompromising development of their cinematic ideas. From a total of 26 submitted applications, the jury, under the chairmanship of Wim Wenders, chose four projects from up-and-coming filmmakers, “Stella Nova” being one.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Electric Girl (Niko Film)
