Next German films & Berlinale guesses

Christian Petzold’s Red Sky, a drama around four youth spending a hot summer on the Baltic coast, is only in script development. Christoph Hochhäusler (who worked alongside Petzold for the Dreileben trilogy) is a bit further along on his next thriller, Aus dem Leben der Echsen (From the Lives of Lizards), inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s classic poem The Hostage. The updated plot: Tez is a young contract killer. The boss of Brussels’ underworld, Charles Mahr, hires her to revenge the murder of one of his couriers. Soon enough Tez find herself surrounded by lies and intrigues, the hunter becoming the hunted.

Andreas Dresen has finished shooting, again collaborating with his usual scriptwriter Laila Stieler and his outstanding Gundermann star Alexander Scheer. “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush" is based on the true story around German-Turkish Guantanamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz. Kurnaz’ story has been put on screen before in Fatih Akin’s short film The Name Murat Kurnaz and by Toronto director Thomas Wallner in his Guantanamo Trap, but Dresen, whose version is said to be scheduled for release next year, takes a different perspective: Rabiye Kurnaz is a modest Turkish housewife in an average apartment building in the northern German city of Bremen. Her life is turned upside down when her son Murat ends up in Guantanamo and she finds herself in front of the Supreme Court in Washington. By her side is the human rights lawyer Bernhard Docke, with whom she clashes at first but who slowly becomes a friend.

Chris Kraus was at TIFF 2010 with The Poll Diaries —introducing a teenage Paula Beer— but is perhaps better remembered for his 2006 success Four Minutes about an elderly piano teacher instructing a young convict in a women’s penitentiary. 15 Years is the upcoming sequel, when pianist Jenny is released from prison, setting not only herself but also her inner demons free.

TIFF alumnus Giulio Ricciarelli (Labyrinth of Lies) is in pre-production for The Guardian, a drama revolving around a dutiful female police officer, who has trouble letting people in and is suspicious of everything she is not familiar with. Events in the refugee camp she is posted to change her perspective.

Yet another TIFF alumnus, Sebastian Ko (We Monsters), is in post-production on the neo-noir thriller Borrowed White. Marta (44) and her son Nathan (5) have withdrawn to Rudolf’s (62) comfortable old farmhouse in the German woods. They are a well attuned team – until the migrant worker Valmir (28) enters their quiet lives, knowing that others just take what they want. Starring the exquisite Susanne Wolff (Styx) with Ulrich Matthes (A Hidden Life).

TIFF Wavelength alumna Helena Wittmann (Drift) is in production on the German-Brazilian 16mm (meta allegory? living hybrid? bio film?) project Human Flowers of Flesh, where we find Ida living with a crew of five on a sailing yacht. During a shore leave in Marseille, the French Foreign Legion attracts Ida’s attention. Via Corsica, where the largest regiment of the Legion is stationed, her altered route leads to Algeria, the Legion’s headquarter until the country gained independence in 1962. On their journey, Ida and her crew do not only break through geographical borders. The past is reflected in the present, different languages seek their common ground, bacteria and fungi penetrate the film material and social hierarchies are reshaped. With every day of the journey, the different layers of narration become increasingly interwoven. The film traces connections and conditions that describe our present and therefore takes an example from the sea: As the origin of all life, the sea contains all information about it, but in the constant transition from one state to the next it can never be determined.

Next time, more in production news from female helmers Margarethe von Trotta, Pia Marais, Katja von Garnier, Barbara Albert, Maggie Peren, and others.

by @JuttaBrendemuhl


image: Fabian, courtesy obs/ZDF/Felix von Boehm