News

Oscar contenders September 5 and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and Andreas Dresen’s historic drama From Hilde, With Love are the frontrunners for this year’s German Film Awards, also called the Lolas, Germany’s equivalent of the Oscars.

September 5, Tim Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller based on the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics, picked up 10 nominations, including for best film and best director, as well as a supporting actress nom for Leonie Benesch, who plays a translator for the U.S. television network broadcasting the attacks live to the world.

Second and third in the running are Dresen’s From Hilde, With Love, which picked up seven Lola nominations, including for best film and best director, with Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig right behind with six.

Rasoulof’s depiction of an Iranian family torn apart by conflicting loyalties to an increasingly oppressive Tehran regime,...

Deutsche Telekom’s first major original, “Wild Republic,” is set to bow April 15 on the telco giant’s Ott service MagentaTV after production was postponed last year due to the ongoing pandemic.

The eight-part adventure series follows a group of young offenders who end up fending for themselves high in the Alps after a mysterious death disrupts the experiential educational program in which they are taking part.

Created by Jan Martin Scharf, Arne Nolting and Klaus Wolfertstetter, the series is produced by Lailaps Pictures, X Filme Creative Pool and Handwritten Pictures in co-production with Deutsche Telekom, Arte and Ard broadcasters Wdr, Swr and One.

“Wild Republic” was initially inspired by Erwin S. Strauss’ 1979 book “How to Start Your Own Country,” which explored the micronation movement of the 1960s, according to Lailaps CEO Nils Dünker. Eric Bouley, now managing partner at Handwritten Pictures, helped develop the original premise while working at Lailaps.

Both the film itself and its theatrical and day and date streaming releases are of interest to cinephiles and cineastes.

The Tobacconist, a film by Nikolau Leytner based on the international bestseller by Robert Seethaler, is an idealistic story of a seventeen-year-old man who leaves his home in the countryside of Austria where his single mother works as a housekeeper. He journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop where he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer. Over time, as the Nazis move in to occupy Vienna, the two very different men form a singular friendship.

The young friend, played by Simon Morzé, succeeds in convincing Freud to leave Vienna and while in real life, this may not have actually happened, the story is a good one in that it illustrates the innate goodness and real friendship that is possible to cultivate during times as dire as the Nazi era,...

Finally, a movie that has the courage to ask: “Was it okay to be horny during the Holocaust?” While Nikolaus Leytner’s “The Tobacconist” poses several other provocative questions along the way, this stiff and milquetoast coming-of-age drama — — fails to ask any of them with the same clarity, and probably would have fared much better had it stuck to the subject at hand rather than try and leverage it toward some kind of deeper meaning. Of course, certain traps are hard to avoid when you’re adapting a Robert Seethaler novel about an über-hormonal Austrian teenager who finds himself getting romantic advice from Sigmund Freud (played by the late Bruno Ganz in the last of the actor’s films to be released in America).

A country boy with Aryan features who grew up on the green shores of Austria’s bucolic lake Attersee, Franz (a strapping but somewhat blank Simon Morzé...

A cigar is never just a cigar where Sigmund Freud is concerned. The father of psychoanalysis serves as a supporting character in “The Tobacconist” — and none other than the great Bruno Ganz embodies the iconic smoker, making this one of the German actor’s last (and least bombastic) performances.

Ganz, whom many will recognize from his role as Adolf Hitler in “Downfall,” now plays one of the Führer’s many victims, a Jewish-born atheist forced to flee his comfortable Viennese home during the Anschluss of 1938, when Germany annexed Austria and occupied its capital, meeting with enthusiastic support from National Socialists and anti-Semites who agreed with his policies. This was an undeniably shameful time in Austria’s history, seen through the eyes of a naive young gentile who’s more concerned with falling in love and losing his virginity than with the rise of fascism, at least in TV director Nikolaus Leytner’s somewhat treacly telling.

The Tobacconist (Der trafikant) Menemsha Films Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Nickolaus Leytner Screenwriters: Klaus Richter, Nikolaus Leytner, based on Robert Seethaler’s novel Cast: Simon Morzé, Bruno Ganz, Johannes Krisch, Emma Drogunova Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 6/29/20 Opens: July10, 2020 “Sometimes a cigar is just a […]

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

Drama played Edinburgh last summer, stars Bruno Ganz (Downfall) in penultimate role.

Kino Lorber has partnered with Menemsha Films on the virtual theatrical release of Nikolaus Leytner’s Austrian coming-of-age drama The Tobacconist starring the late Bruno Ganz.

The film will launch on Kino Marquee on July 10 and will also open in theatrical engagements as cinemas open in key markets across the Us over the coming months.

The release marks Kino Lorber’s latest virtual cinema collaboration with other distributors after it worked with Well Go USA on House Of Hummingbird, which debuts on June 26, and Good Deed Entertainment on Extra Ordinary and Lucky Grandma.

Each year the Berlin Film Festival’s Shooting Stars programme highlights major upcoming European acting talent. Norway’s Ine Marie Wilmann, who played Norwegian iceskater and 1930s Hollywood star Sonja Henie in Sundance entry Sonja: The White Swan, is on a career high, while Germany’s vivacious Emma Drogunova is thriving on home turf. Well known at home for her work in television and theatre, the 33 year-old Norwegian Ine Marie Wilmann has starred twice in films by Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky: 2015’s Homesick and now Sonja: The White Swan, the story of the three-time figure skating …...

The Efp (European Film Promotion) has named its ten best up and coming talents to be honoured as European Shooting Stars during the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in 2019.

In its 22nd year, the European Shooting Stars has taken the best from Europe in the industry who they deem are ready to step out onto the international film scene by a jury of industry experts.

Elliott Crosset Hove from Denmark swayed the jury with his “raw ability to shift from transparent vulnerability to intimidation” in Winter Brothers, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Locarno and Vilinus Film Festivals, and a Robert, the Danish Academy Award.

Also in the news – Jodie Foster to take the helm on English language remake of ‘Woman at War’

Rea Lest-Liik from Estonia impressed with her “fierceness, forcefulness and passion” depicted in November.

The youngest up-and-coming star is Emma Drogunova from Germany.

Film support agency European Film Promotion has selected this year’s ten European Shooting Stars, the emerging talent roster celebrated during the Berlin Film Festival. Making the grade were Elliott Crosset Hove from Denmark, star of Winter Brothers; Estonian actress Lest-Liik, star of feature November; Emma Drogunova from Germany, star of The Tobacconist; and Kristín Thora

Haraldsdóttir from Iceland, star of And Breathe Normally. Also chosen were Aisling Franciosi from Ireland, whose credits include Games Of Thrones and The Nightingale; Macedonian actor Blagoj Veselinov of Secret Ingredient; Dawid Ogrodnik from Poland, star of Silent Night; Norwegian actress Ine Marie Wilmann, known for Sonja: The White Swan; Serbian actor Milan Marić from Dovlatov, which screened this year in competition in Berlin; and The

Charmer star Ardalan Esmaili from Sweden. Previous Shooting Stars include Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Domhnall Gleeson and Baltasar Kormákur. The 2019 jury included U.S. casting director Avy Kaufman,...

Aisling Franciosi (“The Nightingale”), Ardalan Esmaili (“The Charmer”) and Elliott Crosset Hove (“Winter Brothers”) are among the 10 actors and actresses who have been named as the European Film Promotion’s Shooting Stars.

Previous Shooting Stars include Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Pilou Asbæk and Baltasar Kormákur. The new crop of up-and-coming talent for the 22nd edition of the program will be honored during the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

Crosset Hove from Denmark won the best actor award at Locarno and a Robert prize (Denmark’s equivalent of the Oscars) for his performance in Hlynur Palmason’s “Winter Brothers.” The jury praised the actor for his “raw ability to shift from transparent vulnerability to intimidation.”

Franciosi, an Italian-born Irish actress, has been acclaimed for her performance in Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale,” which won two nods at the Venice Film Festival, including the Special Jury Prize. The jury said Franciosi, whose other...