Entries by Goethe-Institut Toronto

One thing that several German(-ish) films at the Toronto International Film Festival 2023 had in common is that they were "road movies" of sorts (in general, lots of driving, also in Radu Jude's Romanian political satire Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World, starring Nina Hoss). Start your engines...

Perfect Days by Wim Wenders: Starting with the non-German "German film" at TIFF3. In the by the Dusseldorf veteran filmmaker of road movies like Alice in the Cities and previous Tokyo homages like Tokyo-Ga, we get to follow CAnnes Best Actor Koji Yakusho as a contented toilet cleaner as he drives (and in his off-time bikes) around Tokyo, showing us its highways but more so it's bars and bath houses. The jury is still out in how far Perfect Days is an evolution or departure from Wenders' earlier road movies, as an audience member wondered in the Q&A after the North American premiere (see photo). Continue reading "TIFF23: German Films on the Road" »

The Berlinale-to-TIFF drama THE TEACHERS‘ LOUNGE by Ilker Çatak will enter the race for Germany to the 96th Oscars® in the “Best International Feature Film“ category. THE TEACHERS‘ LOUNGE is an electrifying work about the microcosm of a school as a societal mirror. The film celebrated its world premiere at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival 2023, generating both national and international attention immediately. Çatak has already had experience with winning at the Oscars®: His graduation film SADAKAT (FIDELITY) won the Student Academy Award® in Gold for "Best Foreign Film" in 2015.

Independent jury spokesperson Torsten Koch of the German Distributors Association commented on the choice:

"With THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE, the jury has chosen a highly topical, universal feature film that is impossible to resist. Continue reading "TIFF TITLE THE TEACHERS‘ LOUNGE is Best..." »

Last year, I was sitting in TIFF's bar with Dusseldorf composer Volker Bertelmann, chatting about the upcoming world premiere of his just Oscar-submitted film All Quiet On The Western Front at the Royal Alexandra Theatre a few days later. Previously nominated for the adoption drama Lion, I next saw Volker on stage at the Dolby Theatre in L.A. in March 2023 as he accepted his Academy Award for Best Original Score -- one of four Oscars Edward Berger's hard-hitting (anti-)war drama received, including Best Film. Composers and musicians out of Germany have see our series The Sound of Filmmusik in 2020, featuring over a dozen influential from Hans Zimmer to Dascha Dauenhauer (Golda; Berlin Alexanderplatz).

Often with three or more international productions in the works alongside his busy touring schedule as a sought-after live performer, my first thought when TIFF announces their line-up is "Let me check what Volker has in the festival." For the 48th TIFF, Bertelmann has scored James Hawes' world premiering UK drama One Life starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who helped rescue hundreds of children from Europe on the verge of the Second World War.

Continue reading "German composers x TIFF" »

The Toronto International Film Festival's schedule for its 48th edition running 7- 17 September, 2023 is complete and includes 14 German productions and co-productions, three of them world premieres. All directors from Germany will attend the festival, alongside actors Maren Eggert (NOT A WORD) and European Shooting Star Leonie Behnesch (THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE). As the largest North American film festival, TIFF has been like other summer festivals in having to grapple with the effects of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. However, this year will once more see a diverse line-up from the over 200 titles on offer.

The drama NOT A WORD (KEIN WORT) by Hanna Slak will have its first screening in the Platform section. The German-Slovenian-French production follows the conductor Nina, who leads a structured life and pursues an ambitious artistic career. When her teenage son Lars has a strange accident at school, she decides to take time out from city life and together they head for her holiday home on the rugged Atlantic coast. Their already brittle relationship is further strained by their silence and unspoken emotions. The leading actress Maren Eggert (I’M YOUR MAN) will be in Toronto and present the film. Continue reading "GERMAN FILMS @ TIFF 2023" »

German film marketing body German Films received 12 film submissions for the 96th Oscar® Competition in the category "Best International Feature Film", with the result from the jury announced on August 23, 2023.

ANSELM by Wim Wenders
THE TEACHERS‘ LOUNGE by Ilker Çatak (at TIFF23)
Continue reading "12 German films submitted for the 96th Oscars" »

As Berlinale Silver Bear winner Afire (trailer) launches across North America, director Christian Petzold's always-on mind is already on his next two projects. He spoke to us about wildfires, European summer films and which actress will be in his next film. Full video interview here, plus a teaser:

Jutta Brendemuhl: Dear Christian Petzold, you are in New York, I am in Toronto. What connects us both right now are the very near and threatening effects of massive forest fires. That's also the haunting background noise of your new film Roter Himmel (literally Red Sky), Afire – on the one hand a wonderfully breezy summer romance, on the other an eerie contemporary drama. Tell us how this came together for you as a writer: the love story against the backdrop of a literally life-threatening environment, the emotional and the real fire.

Christian Petzold: I thought we’ve had hundreds of years of summer stories – some tragic, some comedic, but they would always exist; there would always be people who on a summer day would try to become someone, and we watch them in that process. But standing in a burnt forest in Turkey, I had the feeling that maybe soon that would be gone, there might be no more summer films. If you have no more earth, no more forests, no more clearings and no more dreams and nights, then we have nothing to tell. Continue reading "Interview: Christian Petzold on Afire &..." »

More Goethe-Institut connections at Berlinale going forward after its revamp announcement: Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Berlinale, has asked Jacqueline Nsiah, a Berlin film festival, art and culture consultant, to join his selection committee. (Barbara Wurm is leaving the committee to head the Forum section, starting August 1, 2023.)

“I’m looking forward to working with Jacqueline, who will bring her curating experience and additional expertise on African film to the committee,” says Carlo Chatrian.

Jacqueline Nsiah holds a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin and a Bachelor’s degree in African Studies and Politics from SOAS – University of London and is a freelance curator. Continue reading "Jacqueline Nsiah Joins Berlinale Selection..." »

Spoiler alert: I have a new favourite Christian Petzold film. Afire is new in tone but still signature Petzold, melding inspired writing, assured direction, dedicated acting, poetic camerawork and a fresh playfulness and joie de vivre. Petzold’s fifth Berlinale Competition invitation and the second drama in his elemental trilogy alongside the more melodramatic water myth Undine, Afire combines water and fire and brings back Paula Beer, who had won the Silver Bear for Best Actress as Undine.

Afire is young and joyous, laugh-out-loud funny and touching, light and melancholic, and I wanted to see it again the moment I walked out out the cinema. Petzold has told the film’s origin story before, how a Covid infection during Cannes 2020 sent him into fever dreams of love, lust and fire that he set out to manifest in his latest drama, putting other projects aside. Continue reading "#Berlinale23: Afire #review" »

Two years ago, filmmaker Lina Rodriguez and her cast and crew spent a day at the Goethe-Institut Toronto filming scenes for her migration drama So Much Tenderness, which premiered at TIFF 2022 to much acclaim and finally opens on June 30 in Toronto at TIFF Bell Lightbox (get your tickets) and Montreal's Cinema Public, on July 7 at Vancity Vancouver, on July 14 in Saskatoon (Broadway) and throughout the summer in other Canadian cities.

I spoke to Lina and German actor Sebastian Kowollik (who has a supporting role in the film) about the relationship between language and belonging.

So Much Tenderness (trailer) follows Aurora (Noëlle Schönwald), a Colombian environmental lawyer who is forced to flee her native country when her husband (Juan Pablo Cruz) is murdered. With the help of a young couple (Deragh Campbell and Kazik Radwanski), she illegally crosses into Canada from the U.S. inside the trunk of a car, and is forced to start her life from scratch as a refugee. Six years later, she leads a seemingly normal life in Toronto with her tempestuous daughter Lucía (TIFF Rising Star Natalia Aranguren) and new love Alexander (Sebastian Kowollik), until her estranged cousin Edgar (Francisco Zaldua), who was a suspect in her husband’s murder, resurfaces, threatening everything she’s built.

Jutta Brendemuhl: Dear Lina and Sebastian, you both live an aspect that is woven into the fabric of So Much Tenderness, multilingualism. Continue reading "Interview: Lina Rodriguez & Sebastian..." »

Indisputably the best-received German film in the Berlinale 2023 competition was Afire (review & trailer), for which director Christian Petzold won the Grand Jury Prize. In his latest, a group of friends in their 20s gather in a holiday home on the Baltic coast where emotions run high as the parched forest around them catches fire. Lead actress Paula Beer was in New York days after the Canadian wildfires darkened the skies over Toronto and New York, somewhat like in the film still. As the film hits North American theatres this July, I had the chance to catch up with a busy Beer (Frantz; Never Look Away), who last was at the Goethe-Institut Toronto in 2018 when we presented her celebrated TV series Bad Banks at GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Lightbox.

Jutta Brendemuhl: UK filmmaker Molly Manning Walker's How to Have Sex just won the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes and the plot line goes: "Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday – drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives." I am mentioning this because you were on the jury that awarded this film – and I couldn’t help but wonder whether you thought back to your own current film, Christian Petzold’s coming of age summer love drama Afire. Is there something in the air right now that we need these seemingly lighter films that hold a tension between "depth and triviality” as the German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost commented appreciatively on your character portrayal of Nadja in Afire?

Paula Beer: With many of the movies I saw in Cannes I felt that there is a strong need to deal with topics that come deep from the heart, just like in How to Have Sex. I think there's a desire for less melodrama, for a lighter ambiance and showing the joyful side of life because the last two years have held too much crisis for us. I think it's a combination of showing the truth of life combined with how beautiful life can be – but that it can always flip. Continue reading "Interview: Paula Beer on Petzold's Afire &..." »