German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

Free Canada-wide now at Toronto.Goethe-on-Demand.de & happy Pride!

When 22-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder storms the stage of the ‘Antitheater’ (Anti-Theatre) in Munich in 1967 and seizes the theatre production without further ado, nobody suspects this brazen nobody to become one of the most important post-war German filmmakers. His passionate and driven character swiftly attracts a bunch of dedicated admirers made up of actors, narcissists and suitors. As if he senses his limited life span, he almost frantically creates film after film. While Fassbinder radically pursues his creative vision and views of society, he polarises professionally and privately. Despite early setbacks, many of his films break through at the most renowned films festivals, including Cannes, and are hailed and hated by audience, critics and fellow filmmakers. His anger and his longing for love as well as his self-exploitation, which he also imposes on everyone around him, have made him the most memorable and radical film director, a veritable enfant terrible.

Enfant Terrible, playing Cannes 2020, is a dedication by director Oskar Roehler (Elementary Particles; Sources of Life; Agnes and His Brothers) to the film icon RWF. Continue reading "Goethe on Demand: Enfant Terrible" »

Throughout 2023, the Goethe-Institut presents virtual screenings of recent German cinema —12 films applauding to the echo—freely available Canada-wide under the banner title Echo-Verse.

Arranged in six ‘pairing menus,’ the year-long program Echo-Verse suggests two same same but different films—fiction and non-fiction, short and long forms—connected by common ideas explored from different angles: on intergenerational trauma (in the first menu titled Then & Now); on a future between utopia and extinction (in the cluster Heavy Weather); on family dynamics (Mother Courage); on fate & self-determination (Good Luck); on queer life designs (Love is Love); on machine dreams (Hi Tech). Discover more reflections and reverberations to explore between the menus, from personal and political rebellion to surrender. Continue reading "Goethe on Demand: Echo-Verse" »

We're happy to co-present another recent Berlinale highlight: We Might As Well Be Dead premieres at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in June. The German-Romanian co-pro is writer-director Natalia Sinelnikova's first feature. The story about belonging, the struggle for truth and the power of fear opened the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section of the Berlinale 2022 and immediately hit a nerve with audiences and critics alike.
Continue reading "We might as well be dead @ TJFF 2023" »

“Aristocracy. Anarchy. Obsession.” goes the tagline for the Berlinale hit Sisi & I --starring Sandra Hüller-- immediately positioning it far away from any recent Netflix production or RTL/CBC series on the infamous Bavarian princess. The Goethe-Institut Toronto is co-presenting the black satire's Canadian premiere at the Inside Out Film Festival 2023. The film is a retelling of the story of Elisabeth "Sisi" of Austria from the point-of-view of her lady-in-waiting, Irma Sztáray, who served the Empress until the day she died. Director Frauke Finsterwalder said: "Films should always create a new myth. I want to show that Empress Elisabeth was a radical, intelligent and modern woman, far more than the Sissi with the double S that we all know. Elisabeth was simply born a century too early." Continue reading "Sisi & I @ Inside Out Film Festival" »

The Ordinaries by Sophie Linnenbaum is most certainly the most extraordinary young German film of the past years, and Toronto gets a chance to see it courtesy of TIFF Next Wave, with a Q&A with actor Noah Tinwa. The life-imitating-art meta film might as well be part of a New Strange Wave out of Germany (more on that later).

Have you ever felt like a Supporting Character in your own life? What if you actually are one? In a repressive three class-society, Paula, a simple Supporting Character, is about to face the most important test of her life: She has to prove she deserves to be a Lead. She is at the top of her class at the Main Character School – but so far has failed in generating great emotional music. In search of a solution, she finds herself in the abyss of the cinematic world, on the fringes of the storyline and lost amongst the Outtakes.
Continue reading "The extraordinary Ordinaries @ TIFF Next Wave" »

Since the Goethe-Institut Toronto first produced a night film walk with Hamburg collective A Wall Is A Screen for Nuit Blanche, around the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the innovative and adventurous curators have created programs for ImagineNative Festival and Québec City Film Festival. Your next chance to experience their film tours is their cinematic exploration of Toronto's futuristic Ontario Place (with architect Eberhard Zeidler's 1960s Cinesphere dome) for Hot Docs' 30th birthday. Continue reading "A Wall is a Screen does Ontario Place" »

The Goethe-Institut Toronto, with a new programming focus on "Digital Nature," is pleased to collaborate with the Images Festival again, co-presenting the program "Whispers in the Air" on species extinction and early warning signs that highlights Indigenous artists alongside Cologne artist duo Hyeseon Jeong and Seongmin Yuk:

According to the Smithsonian, the practice of testing the safety of a coal mine for human laborers by deploying a canary first began in Britain in 1911. For 75 years, canaries were brought to coal mines in cages and urged into the shafts. There they would live, keeping those working underground company with their song. But the birds were not there for companionship. They were deployed as detectors of carbon monoxide and other airborne toxins. When the whistling stopped, those working the mine knew the birds had died. Silence was their alarm.

Since then, a “canary in the coal mine” has become shorthand to describe early warning signs of danger. It is increasingly used when speaking about the endangerment of keystone species in response to dwindling habitats and protections. With the loss of a keystone species, an entire ecosystem radically changes, as no other species can fill the gap it has left.

This program presents the work of four filmmakers who foreground the lives of keystone species during the current mass extinction event. If canaries were silent alarms, these films act as whispers in the air and consider our shared futures alongside our more-than-human kin. Continue reading "Whispers in the Air at Images Festival" »

It's shaping up to be a stellar year for German documentaries. Here's the Hot Docs class of 2023, with 18 (co-)productions, in my entirely personal order of fascination, looking at (and from) Africa, looking at war, peace & revolution as well as art & politics starting with the doc I cannot wait to see:

Special presentation!
Igor Levit – No Fear
D: Regina Schilling | P: Thomas Kufus | Germany | 2022 | 118 min | North American Premiere 
The sold-out world tour of classical piano sensation Igor Levit was an intended focus of this up-close portrait, but when COVID hits, a career-defining crisis takes centre stage. Witness a true virtuoso transform musical performance with or without an audience.

Special presentation!
Blix Not Bombs
D: Greta Stocklassa | P: Radovan Síbrt, Alžbeta Karásková, Erik Winker, Mario Adamson | Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden | 2023 | 85 min | North American Premiere 
What the hell is happening in the world? A millennial filmmaker looks to UN diplomat Hans Blix, who led the investigation into weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for answers. Can diplomacy still play a role in averting catastrophe?
Continue reading "German Films @ Hot Docs (& win tix)" »

The German entry ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by Edward Berger, which premiered at TIFF 2022, made history at the 95th Academy Awards®, as one of the two big winners at the Dolby Cinema in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Nominated in nine categories, the anti-war film took the coveted trophy in four categories: International Feature Film, Cinematography, Original Score and Production Design. This continued the winning streak after seven accolades at the British Academy Film & Television Awards (BAFTA). Continue reading "4 OSCARS for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT" »

GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Lightbox is looking at love from all sides with five recent young films on 7+9+14 March 2023. $10 tickets on sale now. In Nico, the self-confident German-Persian nurse Nico enjoys the Berlin summer with her best friend Rosa until a racist attack suddenly tears her out of her carefree life.
When Nico eventually meets the Macedonian woman Ronny, a
connection develops between the two that causes Nico to question
the path she has chosen.

Meet the creative team:

producer, screenwriter and lead actor as Nico, Sara Fazilat

After graduating from high school in Bremen, Germany, Sara attended RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 2012 Sara moved back to Germany to study film production at the DFFB in Berlin and at Columbia University in New York. In 2015, her co-written film Not Too Early, Not Too Late (co-screenwriter) premiered at Cannes. At the 64th San Sebastian International Film Festival, Sara was a member of the student jury for the category International Film. In 2017 she was selected for the Berlinale Talents. In 2018, Sara was selected for the VGF International Producers Programme in Cannes. The film Revolvo, which she produced, won various prizes in 2020 and was invited to Cannes by German Films. Her film Jiyan won, among other international awards, at the Max Ophüls Festival 2020. The same year, she founded the production company THIRD CULTURE KIDS. Nico is Sara's graduation film at the DFFB, which premiered at the Max Ophüls Film Festival 2021, where Sara received the award for Best Young Actress. Later that year, she received the First Steps No Fear as a producer. Continue reading "Why you want to watch... Nico" »