It's the early 1980s. A group of people are thrown together on the East German Baltic coast. The decisions they will make, whether to stay or whether to go --pondering punishable Republikflucht under constant threat by the secret state police-- will determine their personal fates and romantic relationships. I am not talking about Christian Petzold's Barbara but Toke Constantin Hebbeln's Shores of Hope.
The film lives through the three actors Ronald Zehrfeld, August Diehl and Alexander Fehling. The latter TIFF AD Cameron Bailey has a little crush on, if one goes by his film description and today's Daily Picks Youtube recommendation. We are taking bets when Alexander Fehling will hit Hollywood in a big way (after his Inglorious Basterds debut). He certainly is busy, with The Expatriate out in 2 weeks, a new film by Philipp Stoelzl, who also directed Fehling in Young Goethe in Love. I just noticed that we have featured nearly all of Fehling's films over the past 3 years in our various Goethe-Institut film programs, so there must be something to him: As German terrorist leader Andreas Baader in If Not Us, Who?, as the romantic German Sturm und Drang poet in Goethe!, in 13 Semester, Storm, And Along Came Tourists (my favourite, borrow the last 2 from our Goethe-Institut Library!). Last year at TIFF he shined in (undervalued) River Used to Be a Man and in our Goethe Directors Talk. See also my little Fehling portrait a year ago.
In terms of overall trend-watching I am wondering: Is Stasi-ism the new Nazism in German cinema, which has always been dealing heavily in our Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung (coming to terms with Germanies' pasts)? These contemporary history stories of betrayal and how-would-you-have-acted-in-a-dictatorship certainly work for North American audiences, I realized somewhat to my surprise when attending the standing-ovation premiere of soon-to-be-Oscar-rewarded The Lives of Others at TIFF 2006 that went on to enter the TOP 100 films of all times as a modern classic.
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
