News

Set in the fictional small town of Winden, Germany, Netflix's Dark had thought-provoking storylines and quotes filled with complex narratives on time, fate, and free will. Dark follows several characters through mind-bending events after the disappearance of Mikkel, the youngest child of the Nielsen family. The show explores, through three gripping seasons, the secrets and fate of four main families and the choices and sins that each character makes. As thrilling and suspenseful as the show was, some of the dialogue from Dark has made the biggest impact of all with audiences.

Dark was an instant global success for Netflix as viewers engaged with the show for its mind-bending events, series soundtracks, remarkable scenes, and gut-wrenching dialogues. Though sometimes compared to shows like Strangers Things, it is certainly its own unique story that continues to find new fans. Many characters delivered profound quotes on fate, reality, and the freedom of choice.

The Chamber Of Terror TV Spot: "Nash Caruthers is on a deadly collision course with the people that tore his world apart...along with something unexpected. Something far more sinister.

This feature film’s ensemble is led by Timothy Paul McCarthy, Jessica Vano, Ry Barrett and Derek Gilroy.

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Pereira. Produced by Craig Lobo and Berge Karageusian.

Lensed by award-winning Cinematographer Michael Jari Davidson. Practical Makeup Effects created by The Butcher Shop Makeup Effects Studio."

The Chamber of Terror is on the festival circuit and will be heading to Nooga Underground Film Festival and Panic Fest.

-----

Joe Bob’S Jamboree Moves to Memphis' Malco Summer Drive-In for Second Annual Event on July 8-10, 2022: "The second annual Joe Bob’s Jamboree, a three-day genre-film celebration that includes the World Drive-In Movie Festival, a fan convention with celebrity guests from the genre film world, and...

The brilliant Sabine Timoteo stars as an ad exec in Germany whose husband agrees to work for an anti-immigration party

There’s an intriguing touch of Michael Haneke about this refrigerated drama from Ronny Trocker, which begins with a family walking in on burglars at their holiday home. Nothing is stolen, no one is injured; no harm done. But the intrusion disrupts their comfortable lives in ways that are hard to explain: it yanks away the blanket of privilege that keeps them warm and at ease in the world.

Human Factors is a film that gets by on intelligent performances and an unnerving, tense mood. Sabine Timoteo is brilliant as Nina, the owner of an advertising agency in Germany with her husband, Jan (Mark Waschke). They have their offices in a converted warehouse, staffed by ambitious-looking millennials. Nina is the creative brains, while workaholic Jan deals with the clients. On the sly,...

Based on real events, Netflix miniseries “The Billion Dollar Code” – created by Oliver Ziegenbalg and Robert Thalheim, and set to be released exclusively on Netflix on Thursday – shows the German inventors of 1994 Terravision and their fight to be acknowledged as creators of the Google Earth algorithm. In 2014, Berlin-based Art+Com sued Google for patent infringement, claiming that the system bore remarkable similarities to Google Earth.

“ ‘The Social Network’ was told from the perspective of the winner, or the antagonist: Mark Zuckerberg. We tell our story from the perspective of the Winklevoss brothers, the beautiful losers,” Ziegenbalg tells Variety at Zurich Film Festival following the show’s world premiere, referencing David Fincher’s 2010 take on the troubled origins of Facebook.

“Also, in that film, you don’t really love the guy. You look at him from the outside. We wanted to have characters you would want to accompany through this entire process,...

Sundance Film Festival: London has revealed that “Zola” and “Coda” will be among the 2021 lineup, when the festival returns to Picturehouse Central next month.

“Coda” — an acronym meaning “Child of Deaf Adults” — features Marlee Matlin (“The West Wing”) and 19-year-old Emilia Jones (“Locke & Key”) navigating their relationship, while “Zola” is based on a 148-tweet viral Twitter thread from 2015 by Aziah “Zola” Wells. It stars Taylor Paige (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) and Riley Keough (“Max Max: Fury Road”) and will close the 4-day festival.

Edgar Wright’s rockumentary “The Sparks Brothers,” described as a “musical odyssey,” opens the festival on July 29.

Other feature film offerings, which have been selected from the longer line-up shown at the Sundance Film Festival, include “The Nest,” starring Jude Law (“Sherlock Holmes”), animation “Cryptozoo,” which features Lake Bell (“BoJack Horseman”) and Michael Cera (“Arrested Development”), and documentary “Writing With Fire,” about a female-run Indian newspaper, which...

Following a family that begins to unravel after a home invasion, Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors has an ambitiously unconventional structure that leads to a convoluted puzzle box of a film. The well-directed sophomore narrative feature ultimately loses itself, placing more importance on its central theme of interpersonal interactions while firmly rejecting a more fleshed-out, compelling story.

Taking a break from their stressful line of work, advertising agency owners Nina (Sabine Timoteo) and Jan (Mark Waschke) whisk their children (Wanja Valentin Kube and Jule Hermann) to their isolated vacation home, hoping for much needed rest and relaxation. Days after arriving, they hear a piercing scream as they witness a supposed home invasion from their own wildly different individual perspectives. In the aftermath of the event, mistrust begins to brew with tensions between the family rising as they attempt to figure out the motives and the culprits behind the scare. Instead...

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will screen in its Panorama, Encounters, and Perspektive Deutsches Kino sidebars.

The art-house heavy selection for the 2021 Panorama includes several directorial debuts, including British drama Censor by Prano Bailey-Bond, Danis Goulet’s Canadian/New Zealand co-production Night Raiders, and The World After Us, the first feature from French filmmaker Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas, which will have its world premiere in Berlin. Other 2021 Panorama highlights include German drama Human Factors by Ronny Trocker, featuring local stars Mark Waschke and Sabine Timoteo; Ted K, director Tony Stone’s experimental portrait of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; and Dirty Feathers, a documentary from director Carlos Alfonso Corral ...

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will screen in its Panorama, Encounters, and Perspektive Deutsches Kino sidebars.

The art-house heavy selection for the 2021 Panorama includes several directorial debuts, including British drama Censor by Prano Bailey-Bond, Danis Goulet’s Canadian/New Zealand co-production Night Raiders, and The World After Us, the first feature from French filmmaker Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas, which will have its world premiere in Berlin. Other 2021 Panorama highlights include German drama Human Factors by Ronny Trocker, featuring local stars Mark Waschke and Sabine Timoteo; Ted K, director Tony Stone’s experimental portrait of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; and Dirty Feathers, a documentary from director Carlos Alfonso Corral ...

Nearly 200 LGBTQ actors in Germany, including some of the country’s biggest film and TV stars, staged a mass coming-out in a German national newspaper on Friday, in a public appeal for more diversity on stage and screen.

The 185 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender actors — among them Babylon Berlin star Udo Samel, and Karin Hanczewski and Mark Waschke from No. 1 German TV drama Tatort — published a joint manifesto in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung calling for a change in attitudes and more LGBTQ characters in scripts.

“I come from a world that didn’t tell me anything about myself,...

Nearly 200 LGBTQ actors in Germany, including some of the country’s biggest film and TV stars, staged a mass coming-out in a German national newspaper on Friday, in a public appeal for more diversity on stage and screen.

The 185 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender actors — among them Babylon Berlin star Udo Samel, and Karin Hanczewski and Mark Waschke from No. 1 German TV drama Tatort — published a joint manifesto in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung calling for a change in attitudes and more LGBTQ characters in scripts.

“I come from a world that didn’t tell me anything about myself,...

Suffocatingly indebted to the films of Michael Haneke in its chilly dissection of (upper) middle-class malaise, Ronny Trocker’s “Human Factors” is the kind of puzzle-box thriller that you’d want to re-watch immediately — if only it left you with any desire to ever watch it again. , Trocker’s second feature (following 2016’s “The Eremites”) never quite manages to make good on its gamesmanship and only allows itself to have any fun once it’s sure that nobody else is.

The film’s X-ray insight into brittle bourgeoise fear is still lucid enough to get under your skin, especially when Trocker seizes on the feeling that we’ve seen this before and begins to weaponize it against us. Klemens Hufnagl’s floating camera wends its way through an empty Belgian vacation home somewhere near the German border; the place is eerie and expectant, acclimating us to a film preoccupied with blind spots in domestic bliss.

Exclusive: Human Factors, the German-Italian-Danish drama that was announced last night in Sundance’s 2021 World Cinema Dramatic Competition selection, has landed an international sales deal with Athens-based Heretic Outreach.

The film, which was previously known as Zorro, is directed and written by Ronny Trocker, whose credits include 2016 Venice pic The Eremites.

Told through narrative loops and shifting lenses, Human Factors stars Sabine Timoteo and Mark Waschke in the story of a young and prosperous European family. When their marriage is threatened, they spend a weekend at their holiday home on the coast, only to become the victims of a mysterious burglary which sets everything off balance.

Producers are Susanne Mann, Paul Zischler, and Martin Rehbock. Zischlermann filmproduktion is the primary production company with co-producers Bagarrefilm, Snowglobe and Zdf – Das Kleine Fernsehspiel.

“Human Factors is a visually stunning and intense experience,” said Ioanna Stais, Head of Sales & Acquisitions at Heretic Outreach.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from “Dark” Season 2, including the finale. If you haven’t watched yet, you can read the non-spoilery review.]

The second season of “Dark” ends with far more questions than answers, but for the love of all that is unholy, some of those answers are completely and utterly bananas. Which is to say, they’re everything a “Dark” fan could ask for.

In the series, the town of Winden has been experiencing mysterious child abductions that turn out to be linked to an epic battle between good and evil. Teenager Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hofmann) is at the center of the melee and travels back and forth through time in an attempt to save Winden and everyone he loves from an impending nuclear holocaust. As more and more Winden residents begin to also hop around through time, they’re shocked to learn just how connected they all are.

And yes, this is even crazier than Season 1’s shocker that the boy Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz), who goes missing in 2019, actually...

Germany’s dynamic film industry is luring international directors who are finding a wealth of opportunities while contributing to the sector’s increasing diversity.

A number of filmmakers from around the globe have managed to launch or boost their careers in Germany, in some cases far easier than they could have in their native countries.

Well-established in Brazil and Germany, Karim Ainouz will be in Un Certain Regard with “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão,” which being sold by Germany’s The Match Factory.

The film follows two women in Rio de Janeiro from the 1940s to the 1970s and is produced by Rt Features and Germany’s Pola Pandora.

Ainouz has made Berlin his home for the past decade while moving between Germany and Brazil, where he also teaches in Fortaleza.

Uruguayan filmmaker Carlos Morelli, who likewise teaches scriptwriting, came to Germany with an artist-in-residence program in 2008.

Morelli’s latest feature film,...

“Dark” creators Baran bo Odar (left) and Jantje Friese (right), “Berlin Station” actress Emilia Schuele and actor Nikolai Kinski, and Michael Mueller, Mayor of Berlin, were among the guests at the Studio Babelsberg Night Friday at Berlin’s Soho House. Hosting the event were Studio Babelsberg’s president and CEO, Charlie Woebcken, and its COO, Christoph Fisser. Canada Goose was event partner.

Speaking about Babelsberg’s year ahead, Fisser said: “We are in talks for several international and German productions, including feature films and high-end drama series, like the third season of Netflix’s ‘Dark.'”

He added: “We hope that Germany’s film production support system will continue to improve in order to meet the demands of a variety of productions.”

Other guests included actresses Franka Potente, Lea van Acken, Antje Traue, Claudia Michelsen, Iris Berben, Heike Makatsch, Nora von Waldstaetten, Christiane Paul and Jessica Schwarz.

The actors present included Mark Waschke,...

Selection includes TV series from UK, Sweden, Austria, France, Germany, Israel and Denmark.

The Berlin International Film Festival (February 7 – 17) has unveiled the seven TV titles set to be screened in this year’s Berlinale Series programme.

Among the line-up is Amazon’s Hanna written by David Farr, who co-wrote the 2011 film of the same name. It is directed by Sarah Adina Smith, whose film credits include Buster Mal’s Heart, which starred Rami Malek. Hanna stars Esmé Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos. NBCUniversal International Studios is producing alongside Working Title Television.

Also in the selection is Netflix’s first Swedish original series Quicksand,...

Beta Cinema has exercised its first look rights option on “What Doesn’t Kill Us,” writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck’s return to German filmmaking and to the themes and even one character of the string of drama-comedies, particularly “Mostly Martha,” which founded her reputation.

With worldwide rights sold by Beta Cinema, “What Doesn’t Kills Us” will world premiere on Aug. 3 at Switzerland’s Locarno Festival, Europe’s biggest mid-Summer event, where it will play in the Piazza Grande, a showcase for the festival’s usually more audience-friendly fare.

To be released in German cinemas by Alamode, “What Doesn’t Kill Us” is an early production of the Ludwigsburg/Berlin-based production house Sommerhaus Filmproduktion (“In the Aisles”), launched in 2015 with Beta’s Jan Mojto on board as a founding partner. Beta Cinema has a first look but no obligation to handle word sales rights on Sommerhaus titles.

Fore-fronting “Mostly Martha’s...

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from the entirety of Netflix’s series “Dark.”]

Netflix’s German supernatural mystery thriller doesn’t fit neatly into any puzzle box, but it sure is addictive and intriguing. Initially built around the case of a missing boy in Winden, “Dark” quickly bursts through the confines of the small town — not by reaching beyond its borders, but beyond its time. The curious time travel element, however, is a tricky one, and two warring forces are trying to control it. Unfortunately, it seems that many young boys have been caught in the middle.

The time travel occurs in 33-year increments, which creates a curious connection with Winden’s past, present, and future. In particular, viewers have gotten to know the young, middle-aged, and older versions of the same characters that hail from a few major families. Trying to keep the various surnames, generations, and each person’s secrets straight is difficult enough, but throw in a kidnapping priest,...

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from the entirety of Netflix’s series “Dark.”]

Netflix’s German supernatural mystery thriller doesn’t fit neatly into any puzzle box, but it sure is addictive and intriguing. Initially built around the case of a missing boy in Winden, “Dark” quickly bursts through the confines of the small town — not by reaching beyond its borders, but beyond its time. The curious time travel element, however, is a tricky one, and two warring forces are trying to control it. Unfortunately, it seems that many young boys have been caught in the middle.

The time travel occurs in 33-year increments, which creates a curious connection with Winden’s past, present, and future. In particular, viewers have gotten to know the young, middle-aged, and older versions of the same characters that hail from a few major families. Trying to keep the various surnames, generations, and each person’s secrets straight is difficult enough, but throw in a kidnapping priest, arcane references,...

Christian Petzold's The State I Am In (2000) and Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below (2010) will be showing in September and October, 2017 on Mubi in most countries around the world.How can we hang on to a dreamHow can it, will it be the way it seems—Tim Hardin, “How Can We Hang On to a Dream”“When you live in no man’s land, you get stuck with your memories.”—Clara, The State I Am In1. Lovers go on the run while a teenager falls in love. Christian Petzold’s first theatrical feature, The State I Am In (2000), tells two stories simultaneously: that of Hans (Richy Müller) and Clara (Barbara Auer), fugitives pursued by German authorities, and that of their long-suffering daughter Jeanne (Julia Hummer)—who is downcast from the film’s opening scene, in which she meets a German boy named Heinrich (Bilge Bingül) at the beach.Though...

Speaking at the Odessa Film Festival the producer of Sergey Mokritsky’s war drama Unbroken said that the project had now completed principal photography.

20th Century Fox and Universal are among the Us majors ¨in talks¨ to take on worldwide distribution for Sergey Mokritsky’s € 3.7m biopic/war drama Unbroken.

Speaking at this week’s Works in Progress showcase at the Odessa Film Industry Office, producer Egor Olesov of Kiev-based Kinorob said that the Ukrainian-Russian co-production - which had previously previously gone under the working title of The Battle Of Sevastopol - completed principal photography in Kiev on last Tuesday (July 15).

Expected to be a blockbuster success in Ukraine, the film recounts the story of student Lyudmila Pavilchenko who was a legendary sniper during the Second World War with 309 shots to her credit and later became friends with the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

In an interview with Russia’s Ria-Novosti , producer Natalia Mokritskaya said that the film...

Exclusive: Veteran UK producer Patrick Cassavetti has boarded Marat Alykulov’s black comedy Lenin?!.

Cassavetti, producer on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas - agreed to become executive producer on the Kyrgyzstani project following talks in Cannes last month.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily at this year’s Moscow Business Square (Mbs), producer Joanna Bence of Curb Denizen Productions said that Cassavetti will also offer new ‘perks’ to the ‘Help Bury Lenin?!’ crowdfunding campaign by giving burgeoning filmmakers the chance to receive personal feedback on their past or upcoming productions.

Bence also revealed that German-born, London-based DoP Stephan Bookas - who has worked on Maleficent and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy - is confirmed as cinematographer for the project, which was pitched at the Mbs’s co-production forum last year after having been presented at Busan’s Asian Project Market and Connecting Cottbus in autumn 2012.

Together with Curb Denizen producer partner [link=nm...

Title: Barbara Director: Christian Petzold Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Mark Waschke A superbly crafted low-boil drama about an East German doctor who must balance dedication to her patients with a potential escape to the West, “Barbara” represents the latest entry in a continuingly successful working relationship between actress Nina Hoss and director Christian Petzold. A smart, engaging story built on telling details, the film gets its hooks into you the old-fashioned way — through character — and highlights the difficulties and cost of living by principles. Winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear Prize for Petzold, and festival-minted at Toronto, New York and Telluride, “Barbara” unfolds in 1980, in a [ Read More ]

The post Barbara Movie Review 2 appeared first on Shockya.com.

Title: Barbara Adopt Films Director: Christian Petzold. Screenwriter: Christian Petzold. Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke, Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Mark Waschke, Claudia Geisler, Peter Weiss, Carolin Haupt. Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 12/4/12 Opens: December 21, 2012 Before Mr. Gorbachev tore down that wall, tens of thousands of residents in East Germany remained frustrated that they could not escape from Communist oppression. Escape? For the most part, they could not even leave for a vacation, do some traveling abroad, and they certainly could not go to the Western zone of their own country. Traffic between Communist states and democratic nations was always one way, but in East  [ Read More ]

The post Barbara Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

★★★★☆ From acclaimed German director Christian Petzold comes Barbara (2012), a taut, brooding and intelligent drama set behind the Berlin wall, in the rural provinces of Eastern Germany. When our titular protagonist (Nina Hoss), a doctor working in Berlin, applies to immigrate to the West, she finds herself banished to a small rural hospital. Despite finding herself under constant surveillance from the Stasi, she still manages to smuggle in western luxuries thanks to her boyfriend, Jorg (Mark Waschke), who's also quietly planning her escape.

Read more »...

Of all directors working in Germany today, Christian Petzold has the surest hand and, while, after just one viewing, it's too early to stake a claim for Barbara as his best film yet, it is, in many ways, a culmination of his stylistic progression towards a classic yet vividly contemporary cinematic language. Referencing influences in interviews — like many directors who can afford the time, Petzold likes to screen films for his cast in the weeks of rehearsal before shooting begins — he's been citing quite a few of late from both Golden Age and New Hollywood. The ghost of Marnie moves through Yella (2007) in the way a camera follows a woman up a set of stairs. Jerichow (2008) transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice from the oppressive shadows of film noir to a sun-drenched summer in present-day Germany. Of the three films that comprise Dreileben (2011), Petzold's Beats Being Dead is the one...

Fernando Meirelles' 360 relationship drama, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights picked up at Toronto Prokino Filmverleih has acquired both films which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as Valerie Donzelli's French drama Declaration of War. The helmer also stars in the film alongside co-writer Jeremie Elkaim, reports Variety. There's no release date set as yet for 306, Wuthering Heights or Declaration of War as yet. Other films coming from Prokino include Summer Window, a German love story helmed by Hendrik Handloegten, starring Nina Hoss and Mark Waschke...

Fernando Meirelles' 360 relationship drama, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights picked up at Toronto Prokino Filmverleih has acquired both films which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as Valerie Donzelli's French drama Declaration of War. The helmer also stars in the film alongside co-writer Jeremie Elkaim, reports Variety. There's no release date set as yet for 306, Wuthering Heights or Declaration of War as yet. Other films coming from Prokino include Summer Window, a German love story helmed by Hendrik Handloegten, starring Nina Hoss and Mark Waschke...

“Unexplainable attraction leads to an extramarital affair…” – no better way to start our report about Christoph Hochhausler’s new project with title The City Below premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard category.

The City Below

German director shows how the manipulation and amorality of the banking world play out in a private setting. And if you’re interested in this kind of stories (as you see, we definitely are), than you should check the rest of this report, because The City Below synopsis part goes like this:

“A man and a woman at an art exhibition share a fleeting moment of attraction, which neither can act upon. Days later, a chance second meeting leads to an innocent coffee and the two strangers – both married – toy with their unexplainable fascination for each other.

Svenja is curious and finds herself in a hotel room with Roland, but she does not consummate an affair.

Berlin -- Sherry Horman's fashion biopic "Desert Flower" and the political drama "Der Grosse Kater" (The Big Tom-Cat) from director Wolfgang Panzer tied for the top prize as Best Film at the Bavarian Film Awards this weekend.

"Flower" producers Peter Herrmann and Dietmar Guntsche and "Kater" producer Wolfgang Behr will share the €200,000 ($287,000) award that comes with the honor, cash that has to be invested in new film projects.

Acting legend Barbara Sukowa added a Bavarian best actress trophy to her trophy cabinet, taking the honor for her portrayal of Medieval nun and proto-feminist Hildegard von Bingen in "Vision" from Magarethe von Trotta.

Best director went to Juraj Herz for his period drama "Habermann," with lead Mark Waschke taking the best actor prize for his role as a mill owner whose life is transformed with the onset of World War II.

Benjamin Heisenberg received the best newcomer nod for his sophomore effort,...