While looking over German films in production, I noticed that star auteur Christian Petzold, after a slew of films delving deep into German and European history, is currently following the
fantastical siren call of the genre film with his new film UNDINE. As are many other intriguing filmmakers.
Historian
Undine (Paula Beer of TRANSIT) works as a tour guide in Berlin. When her boyfriend (Jacob Matschenz of THE WAVE) leaves her for another women, her deepest secret breaks through the surface of her normal, urban life: Under a spell, Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water she came from. But this Undine, unlike the fairy tale mermaid, refuses to give in to her fate. She does not want to kill, or leave. Then she meets Christoph (Franz Rogowski of TRANSIT) and falls in love. As an industrial diver, he introduces her to his underwater world — one she already knows. They spend happy times together, but he feels that she is running away from something. The film wrapped shooting in August,
I hope to see it in the Berlinale competition. Perhaps it’ll be what THE SHAPE OF WATER was to TIFF. Btw, it is also starring actor-director Maryam Zaree, who was just in Toronto as a guest of the Goethe-Institut with her documentary BORN IN EVIN. If you can’t wait till late February to hopefully see in-demand multilingual star Paula Beer (FRANTZ), catch her in (European) cinemas right now in Abel Lanzac's action thriller
THE WOLF'S CALL, a (literally dark) near-future submarine drama.
87-year-old and recently very active
master Alexander Kluge
(HAPPY LAMENTO), the godfather of New German Cinema, too is
following mythical women with ORPHEA, starring Lilith Stangenberg, who you just saw at TIFF19 in Angela Schanelec’s I WAS AT HOME BUT. ORPHEA radically reinvents the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a rock musical set in a grotesque and surreal interpretation of today's Manila.
ORPHEA de Jesus, the lead singer of ORPHEA’s Lament, is the biggest attraction of the city’s underground rock scene. Despite her often odd song themes –fights with prostitutes, hommages to poverty ...– ORPHEA's music has the power to conjure up unforeseen and otherworldly appearances and events. Avoiding fame and groupies, ORPHEA is dedicated to her prostitute-lover Eurydico. When he dies suddenly, she is ravaged by grief, knocking on the underworld’s door until compassionate ghosts give her access to Eurydico’s mausoleum. The rest of the plot involves jeeps and ants and child-like freaks.
This romp is another collaboration with Filipino wild child director Khavn De La Cruz.
Meanwhile, US indie director Nina Menkes (a former Berlin resident) also does Greek Myths Modernized with MINOTAUR REX, transplanting the monster drama into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict —casting Nina Hoss as Ariadne. Hoss will start filming Berlin 1945-set international TV thriller series SHADOWPLAY alongside Sebastian Koch (THE LIVES OF OTHERS) and Canada’s own Taylor Kitsch (X-MEN) in 2020.
Martin Persiel (of East German skater doc sleeper hit THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA) chooses another popular genre —sci-fi— and gives it the creative doc treatment in his next project THE WAY WE ARE, mixing it with environmental concerns. (
teaser trailer) The
futuristic fairy-tale documentary tackles biodiversity, the beauty of nature, and how Ben, a student, saves the world. It is the year 2045, where 10 billion people look back at the past while fighting for resources and water. The film explores their memories of a bygone golden age, our present, a world where millions of plants and animals lived on a planet that was still relatively healthy.
Animals aren’t endangered in THE SWARM, quite the opposite. Here, sea creatures band together to overpower humankind. Think BIRDS meets JAWS. The literary adaptation is touted as an ecological thriller about the delicate interconnectedness between mankind and earth.
GAME OF THRONES & THOR director Alan Taylor is turning Frank Schätzing’s North Sea mega novel into an 8-part English-language series for German TV and global market sales — reportedly with twice the budget of (very expensive) hit series BABYLON BERLIN.
Speaking of go big or go home: If we fail (on) this planet, let’s go to the stars, see GRAVITY; FIRST MAN; APOLLO 11; AD ASTRA; HIGH LIFE …......... Apocalypse-trained Roland Emmerich is on board with MOONFALL, where a space crew travels to the moon after it is struck by an asteroid and is sent on a collision course with earth.
Brazil's Joe Penna, who went from YouTube star to Cannes (ARCTIC) in the blink of an eye, meanwhile is shooting German-US co-production STOWAWAY in Germany, starring Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette and Daniel Dae Kim. The sci-fi thriller follows the crew of a spaceship headed to Mars that discovers an accidental stowaway after takeoff. Too far from earth to turn back and with resources quickly dwindling, the ship's medical researcher emerges as the only dissenting voice against the group consensus that has already decided in favour of a grim outcome. The best news: Our friend, Dusseldorf's
Volker Bertelmann (LION; HOTEL MUMBAI) is scoring.
See you in the cinema in 2020!
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Orphea, A film by Alexander Kluge & Khavn, courtesy Rapid Eye Movement
