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“Cicadas,” written and directed by Ina Weisse and anchored by Nina Hoss (who also serves as executive producer), unfolds over roughly 100 minutes in German and French. Co-stars Saskia Rosendahl, Vincent Macaigne, and Thorsten Merten orbit Hoss’s Isabell, a late-forties Berlin real-estate agent caught between two worlds.

Isabell’s life is measured in caregiving: tending to her stroke-stricken architect father and aging art-teacher mother in their sleek Brandenburg weekend home, all while Philippe, her French engineer husband, drifts ever farther from their marital vows. Into this precarious balance steps Anja, a single mother eking out a living in the countryside and haunted by her restless daughter. Their chance encounter sets in motion a silent reckoning of duty, longing, and the ache of solitude.

Cityscapes of steel and glass clash with the forest’s green hush, and the film’s rhythm slips between the contemplative and the uncanny. Moments of quiet...

In “Cicadas,” top German actress Nina Hoss (who also serves as executive producer) reunites with filmmaker Ina Weisse, the director of her 2019 drama “The Audition,” in which she played a tightly wound woman whose life is unraveling. That same logline could also describe Weisse’s latest, where Hoss embodies 48-year-old Isabell, a high-end Berlin realtor who is trying to care for her aging parents at the same time that her childless marriage to a French engineer is falling apart. Meanwhile, she’s drawn to Anja (Saskia Rosendahl), a struggling single mother from the Brandenburg countryside where Isabell’s architect father built a striking modernist home. Playing out in several non-complementary registers and burdened with a lot of barely sketched-out backstory, “Cicadas” is more confounding than compelling.

The underlying theme of the movie is family relationships, with the duty that parents owe to their children and grown children to their parents,...

Katharina Thalbach as retired-chancellor-turned-amateur-detective Angela Merkel, in “Miss Merkel” on MHz Choice. Courtesy of MHz Choice

This review covers two German TV movies under the title “Miss Merkel.” Yeah. It really is that one. In this pair of tele-films from 2023 and 2024, the premise is that the eponymous retired chancellor moves to a small city, seeking peace and quiet after decades in the international political arena.

The producers of the shows give this Angela Merkel (Katharina Thalbach) a fictional husband, Achim Sauer (Thorsten Merten), a bodyguard, Mike (Tim Kalkhof), and a pug, Helmet, for her life of relaxation. But rest doesn’t come naturally to such a character, and when murders occur, she lights up with the chance to start doing the Miss Marple/Jessica Fletcher thing. And she does it delightfully.

This incarnation of Angela Merkel is sharp, witty, energetic and a bit caustic. Thalbach looks convincingly like her character,...

Disney+ has released the official trailer for ‘Sam – A Saxon.’ It is the first original series produced out of Germany.

Based on the incredible, true story of Samuel Meffire, the first black policeman in East Germany. This gripping series follows Sam’s irrepressible search for his place in an intensely prejudiced society. In his fight to overcome the system, he becomes the face of an anti-racism campaign and a symbol of a new Germany. However, his meteoric rise to fame is quickly followed by an abrupt downfall as he ends up behind bars with German tabloids branding him “public enemy #1”.

Starring Malick Bauer, Svenja Jung, Luise von Finckh, Ivy Quainoo, Thorsten Merten, Martin Brambach, Carina Wiese and Tyron Ricketts, International Emmy Award® winner Jörg Winger (“Deutschland83/86/89”) is a showrunner Sebastian Werninger (both Big Window Productions) and Tyron Ricketts (Panthertainment) are the producers of the seven-part miniseries.

Also in trailers...

"We need more men like you." Disney+ has revealed an official trailer for a German mini-series titled Sam: A Saxon, also known as Sam - Ein Sachse in German. The series tells the extraordinary and exciting story of East Germany's first Black police officer. So this is pretty much Germany's BlacKkKlansman, but without the Spike Lee edge this time, and without any KKK - though still plenty of racists. Based on the true story of Sam Meffire's rise and fall in East Germany, this miniseries follows Sam's desperate search for a place he can call home, as he fights for recognition and justice in the wild years following Germany's reunification in 1989. Malick Bauer stars as Sam, with Tyron Ricketts, Svenja Jung, Luise von Finckh, Nyamandi Adrian, Paula Essam, Ivy Quainoo, Thorsten Merten, Martin Brambach, and Aristo Luis. This looks like something that will likely only appeal to Germans, but...

Exclusive: Jörg Winger and his Sam – A Saxon co-creator Tyron Ricketts believe the time is now right to tell the story of East Germany’s first Black policeman after a near-20-year period of shopping the project.

Disney+’s Sam – A Saxon, which was the streamer’s first German greenlight, spotlights Samuel Meffire, a former bricklayer who became the first elite East German policeman of African descent in the 1980s, where he went from diversity poster boy to being on the wrong side of the law. Scroll down for a trailer of the series that launches April 26.

Ricketts first met Meffire in 2002 and began shopping the project – initially as a feature – with Deutschland 83 co-creator Winger in 2006, but the pair believe German audiences have only become ready for the story in the past couple of years.

“The answer from buyers when we pitched it back then was always ‘I find it...

Sales

Chris O’Dowd (“Puffin Rock”), Amy Huberman (“Derry Girls”), Beth McCafferty and Eva Whittaker (“Wolfwalkers”) lead the voice cast of “Puffin Rock and the New Friends,” the film based on the TV series “Puffin Rock.”

Following their collaboration on Oscar nominees “Song of the Sea” and “The Breadwinner,” WestEnd Films is teaming again with Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Northern Ireland’s Dog Ears on the film and is launching sales at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM), where first footage will be shown to buyers.

“Puffin Rock and the New Friends” sees Oona, Baba, May and Mossy joined by a new characters Isabelle, Phoenix and Marvin. When the last Little Egg of the season disappears under mysterious circumstances, Oona and her new friends race against time to bring the Little Egg home before a big storm hits Puffin Rock and puts the entire island in danger.

The film...

Crime show “Divided We Stand,” which will premiere in Germany on the public broadcaster Ard on Feb. 22 with the title “Zerv,” screened this week at the European Film Market in the Berlinale Series Market Selects section. World sales are being handled by Beta Film.

The show, based on true events, follows a group of police officers from West Germany who are sent to Berlin to form a special investigations unit, called Zerv, which aims to root out crimes committed in the German Democratic Republic (Gdr) during the Communist era. However, as the officers dig deeper into the crimes in the East they start to find that many of them had originated in the West.

Speaking to Variety, exec producer Gabriela Sperl says the clash of cultures, values and ideologies was not only interesting, but also held the promise of some darkly comic moments as the West Germans try to “teach...

WarnerMedia Germany has confirmed that Ricky Gervais is among the cast of its comedy series Greenlight – German Genius, which is now shooting in Berlin.

The eight-part TV satire stars Kida Khodr Ramadan (4 Blocks) as himself. It recounts a dramatized version of events after Ramadan’s real-life Twitter exchange with Gervais in 2018, in which the British comedian praised Ramadan’s performance in 4 Blocks.

In Greenlight, Ramadan convinces Gervais to give him the rights for a German adaptation of Extras. However, as he attempts to progress the show to production, he comes up against the fact that the Germans aren’t particularly known for their humor, and that there are not many international stars in the country.

Also in the cast are a host of known German actors, musicians, and comedians, including: Detlev Buck, Frederick Lau, Tom Schilling, Veysel Gelin, Olli Schulz, Heike Makatsch, Maria Furtwängler, Sascha Geršak, Katrin Bauerfeind, Britta Hammelstein,...

Ricky Gervais has boarded “Greenlight – German Genius” a new series from WarnerMedia Germany inspired by one of his tweets from 2019.

The 8-episode series, which has started shooting in Berlin, satirises the German television industry.

Two years ago the “After Life” writer and actor sent a public message via Twitter to German actor Kida Ramadan praising his portrayal of character Toni Hamady in series “4 Blocks.”

“Congratulations,” wrote Gervais. “Another masterpiece.”

In a case of art imitating life, Ramadan and Gervais will now appear as fictional versions of themselves in “Greenlight – German Genius,” in which Ramadan convincing Gervais to let him make a German adaptation of his hit series “Extras” after the comedian sends Ramadan a tweet praising his performance in “4 Blocks.”

However, Ramadan hits a stumbling block when he realizes there aren’t any international celebrities in Germany to cameo in the adaptation all while trying to navigate the...

The Berlin ceremony brought together the German industry for the first time in 18 months.

Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man was the big winner at the Lolas, the German Film Awards in Berlin on October 1, winning best film, best director, best screenwriter for Schrader and Jan Schomberg and best actress for Maren Eggert.

I’m Your Man is produced by Lisa Blumenberg’s Hamburg-based Letterbox Filmproduktion. It is Germany’s entry to the best international film category at the Oscars. I’m Your Man had its world premiere in competition at the Berlinale in March where Eggert also won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for her performance.

The Berlinale lineup already includes films from Jia Zhangke, Matías Piñeiro, and more, but now the competition slate has arrived and it’s an incredibly promising selection. Headed by Carlo Chatrian, it includes many of our most-anticipated films of the year with Christian Petzold’s Undine, Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days, Philippe Garrel’s The Salt of Tears, Abel Ferrara’s Siberia, and Caetano Gotardo & Marco Dutra’s All the Dead Ones, plus recent festival favorites: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

Check out the lineup below and return for our coverage.

Competition

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Germany / Netherlands

by Burhan Qurbani

with Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, Richard Fouofié Djimeli

World premiere

Dau. Natasha

Germany / Ukraine / United Kingdom / Russian Federation

by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel

with Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo,...

The Berlin International Film Festival on Wednesday morning revealed the main competition lineup and gala selections for festival’s 70th edition.

The festival, which begins February 20, will screen 18 films in competition, including movies from Sally Potter, Kelly Reichardt, and Eliza Hittman. Six are from female directors.

Among the gala presentations is Pixar’s” Onward.” The Dan Scanlon-helmed urban fantasy includes the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Kyle Bornheimer, Lena Waithe, and Ali Wong.

Here is the complete list:

Competition

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” (Germany/Netherlands)

Director: Burhan Qurbani

Cast: Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, and Richard Fouofié Djimeli

“Dau. Natasha” (Germany/Ukraine/United Kingdom/Russia)

Directors: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel

Cast: Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo, Alexei Blinov, and Luc Bigé

“Domangchin yeoja” (“The Woman Who Ran”) (South Korea)

Director: Hong Sangsoo

Cast: Kim Minhee,...

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled its 2020 line-up, with 18 films playing in competition from directors such as Abel Ferrara, Sally Potter, Christian Petzold, Hong Sangsoo, Kelly Reichardt and Eliza Hittman.

Abel Ferrara’s Willem Dafoe starrer “Siberia” is a world premiere in competition, as is Sally Potter’s “The Roads Not Taken.”

Among the U.S. films at the Berlinale, Reichardt’s “First Cow” is an international premiere, and so too is Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”

Pixar’s latest animation, “Onward”, also has its international premiere out of competition in the Special Galas section.

Previous Berlin Silver Bear winner Christian Petzold’s latest, “Undine”, world premieres, while Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof, who is not allowed to travel outside his home country, world premieres his latest, “There is No Evil.”

Six out of the 18 films in competition are helmed by female directors.

The 70th edition of the festival...

Anke Engelke will play a funeral eulogy speaker who loses faith in her work and tries to sabotage her husband’s funeral in “The Last Word,” an original comedy drama out of Germany for Netflix.

Pantaleon Films is making the six-part series with Aron Lehmann and Carlos V. Irmscher attached as showrunners. The pair co-wrote the series with authors Nora Valo and Carolina Zimmermann. Lehmann will also direct the show.

“Just like in real life, drama and humor are clashing constantly,” Engelke said of the series. “Family and relationships, loss and grief, life and death, the absurdities of life, the rediscovery of strength and lust for life, it is all in there – so beautiful it makes you cry.”

“The Last Word” is based on an idea of Thorsten Merten. The series is the latest in a growing roster of German originals from Netflix as the streamer increasingly looks to local production.

Deutschland ’86 star Anke Engelke is to lead a German Netflix original as a funeral eulogy speaker who sabotages her own husband’s funeral.

The Svod service has ordered The Last Word, a six-part series from Pantaleon Films, which produces Amazon’s You Are Wanted. It will be showrun by Aron Lehmann and Carlos V. Irmscher, who wrote the series with Nora Valo and Carolina Zimmermann based on an idea from Thorsten Merten.

Engelke plays a funeral eulogy speaker who loses both faith in her work and control over her family. When she realises that she can’t let go, she starts to sabotage her husband’s funeral – until she finds the right words.

Engelke said, “I am very much looking forward to The Last Word and this work and journey with Netflix, Pantaleon, the wonderful director Aron Lehmann, the fantastic screenplay and amazing colleagues. Just like in real life, drama and humour are clashing constantly.

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...