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Filmfest Munich presents New German Cinema

Jerome Morrow
Contributor
Filmfest Munich presents New German Cinema

The upcoming Filmfest Munich just announced 20 exciting world premieres for their New German Cinema strand. Highlights include Fremde Tochter by Stephan Lacant with Elisa Schlott and Heike Makatsch, Detour by Nina Vukovic with Luise Heyer and Lars Rudolph, Luna by Khaled Kaissar with Lisa Vicari, Branko Tomovic and Bibiana Beglau, Lomo - The Language of Many Others by Julia Langhof with Jonas Dassler and Lucie Hollmann and many more exciting movies from young and established German filmmakers.

"Do You Sometimes Feel Burned Out and Empty?" The films of the New German Cinema sidebar ask us probing questions about our self-image, self-improvement and other's perception of us, which informs not just Lola Randl's film of that name starring Charly Hübner and Benno Fürmann, but all the searchers, slackers, strugglers and stressors of contemporary Teutonic output.

Be it the search for the perfect partner or the battle with the modern patchwork family, German film deals with various declinations of single or double relationships: Love makes blind – even those already "Blind & Ugly", such as neurotic Ferdi (Tom Lass), who only dares to hit on Jona (Naomi Achternbusch) because she's vision-impaired. The romance between Louk (Lara Feith) and Manja (Paula Hüttisch) is atmospheric and pure as "Air": No fear. No lies. No traces. Laura Lackmann follows a couple (Laura Tonke and Marc Hosemann) at odds with themselves and each other in "Film Without Title" (WT). "Whatever Happens" strikes to the core of modern patchwork families and part-time relationships, as Julian (Fahri Yardim) and Hannah (Silvia Hoeks) make a mess out of their breakup.

Modern family constellations are no less complicated on German screens: Black comedy "Bad Bugs" features an aging ladies' man, who wants to show the romantic ropes to his son, who's not really that much like him, it turns out, while "Lucky Loser" depicts a weekend dad who's lost his wife but gained much more. "Strange Daughter" imagines a teen pregnancy with a Muslim dad.

The number of comedies is remarkable this year, as is the resurgence of genre elements in arthouse dramas and tragedies: In "The Garden", a family sweats through the heat wave of 1976 after losing their mother, encountering greater problems than the heat. In "Four Hands", two sisters (Frida-Lovisa Hamann and Friederike Becht) are bonded by trauma for life. "Luna" toys with thriller elements when a family is murdered and Russian agents appear, while hitchhiker Alma (Luise Heyer) takes a very wrong turn in "Detour".

Hipster capital Berlin figures large in New German Cinema: "The Long Summer of Theory" celebrates the unique Berlin flair of today, while "Magical Mystery" is an entertaining look back at life in '90s techno Berlin, with an A-list cast (Charly Hübner, Annika Meier, Detlev Buck, Marc Hosemann) based on the novel by "Element of Crime" singer Sven Regener. "Making Judith!" by indie eminence terrible Klaus Lemke, shot at the FILMFEST MÜNCHEN 2016, is a parable on online casting 2.0 and creating virtual stars and starlets.

Virtual realities also feature in "Lomo – The Language of Many Others", wherein a high-school grad (Jonas Dassler) shares his life decisions with his followers on social media, eventually losing control of his life. "A Thought of Ecstasy" is a stream of consciousness desert trip, which stages the United States as a bizarre dreamscape and metafiction of its own.

New German Cinema is more than just dramatic fiction, however: FILMFEST MÜNCHEN 2017 also features two more docs: "The Temperature of Will" accompanies the Legionnaires of Christ, a conservative Catholic society tested by a child abuse scandal. And Hermann Pölking addresses the perennial question of "Who Was Hitler“ in his definitive seven and a half hour doc.

Find out more on: https://www.filmfest-muenchen.de

 

 

 

 

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