News

It’s a big weekend for critically acclaimed indies in limited release as well as a handful of moderate openings, including Richard Gere’s latest film Longing. The provenance of that is unusual as the film from Lionsgate/Grindstone is a Canada-set remake of a 2017 Israeli drama. The original was quite well received, but the film opening this weekend has been thoroughly skewered by critics.

After winning screenplay and audience awards in Israel, the original film premiered in Venice, taking the Bnl People’s Choice Award, then played Toronto.

Both versions are written and directed by Savi Gabizon. Characters and story are identical: a successful single American businessman (Gere) meets up with a 20-year-old old flame (Suzanne Clément) and learns that he has a son, and, a beat later, that the young man has just died in a car accident. Trying to process that and find a connection,...

Weydemann Bros., the Berlin- based production house behind 2019 sleeper hit System Crasher and this year’s Locarno winner No One’s With the Calves, has teamed up with writer Alexander Dydyna (Young Goethe in Love) and director David Sieveking (David Wants to Fly) for its next project, a climate crisis comedy called Unser Zuhause Brennt (Our House Is Burning).

The plot imagines a comfortable suburban family whose lifestyle, and carbon footprint, are challenged by their daughter Zora, a Greta Thunberg-like climate activist. But her efforts to get everyone on board the mission to save the planet stirs up old conflicts and ends up triggering an ...

Weydemann Bros., the Berlin- based production house behind 2019 sleeper hit System Crasher and this year’s Locarno winner No One’s With the Calves, has teamed up with writer Alexander Dydyna (Young Goethe in Love) and director David Sieveking (David Wants to Fly) for its next project, a climate crisis comedy called Unser Zuhause Brennt (Our House Is Burning).

The plot imagines a comfortable suburban family whose lifestyle, and carbon footprint, are challenged by their daughter Zora, a Greta Thunberg-like climate activist. But her efforts to get everyone on board the mission to save the planet stirs up old conflicts and ends up triggering an ...

Chicago – “Young Goethe in Love” is not the sort of title guaranteed to send American audiences to the theater in droves. For one thing, the title sounds too much like “Shakespeare in Love,” though its original German title, “Goethe!” sounds like a giddy musical along the lines of “Oliver!” Perhaps Goethe’s name should’ve been cut from the title altogether and relegated to a snappy tagline like, “Love Can Cometh and Goethe in an Instant.”

Thankfully, a poorly titled and under-marketed cinematic gem can find the audience it deserves with the help of good critical buzz, and here’s hoping that will happen to Philipp Stölzl’s irresistible 2010 period romance upon its DVD realease. The future master of Weimer Classicism was a mere 23-year-old when he first penned 1774’s “The Sorrows of Young Werner,” which heavily influenced the subsequent Romantic literary movement, as well as inspire a wave of...

Music Box Films has announced the release dates of “Young Goethe in Love,” starring Alexander Fehling (“Inglorious Basterds”), “Miriam Stein, Moritz Bleibtreu (“The Baader Meinhof Complex), Volker Bruch (“The Reader”), Blughart KlauBner (“The White Ribbon”) and Henry Hübchen. The film, written by Alexander Dydyna, Christoph Müller and director Philipp Stolzl, as well as being the official selection of several film festivals including the Seattle, Miami, Florida, Washington, DC, Palm Springs and Scottsdale International Film Festivals and the Atlanta Film Festval and EU Festival in Chicago, will open in Los Angeles and New York November 4, followed by a national release. Here’s the synopsis of “Young Goethe in Love”: “Germany 1772...