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A Bulgarian construction site is the focus for an acute interrogation of masculinity and economic imperialism

The third feature from German film-maker Valeska Grisebach sharply observes two intersecting communities of men with a woman’s needling gaze. Though titled Western, it is set in eastern Europe, close to Bulgaria’s Greek border (hinting at the presence of refugees). Wild country – politically volatile, physically harsh, and its own kind of wild west frontier.

Lonely cowboy Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann) is a German construction worker and former legionnaire sent to spend the summer building a hydroelectric power plant in rural Bulgaria. More comfortable in the company of pearl grey steed Tornado than he is with his boss, Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek), Meinhard ditches his testosterone-fuelled colleagues and befriends Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov), one of the villagers. His fellow Germans are a parody of hyper-masculinity, spending their off-duty hours drunkenly braiding one another’s hair around a campfire,...

After an 11-year hiatus, German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach returns with an intelligent, subtle, consistently engaging culture-clash drama. Grisebach’s naturalistic style and refusal to adhere to convention brings Western’s remote Bulgarian setting to life and, despite her time away, foregrounds her as a director to watch.

Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann) is the newbie to a group of German construction workers who have been tasked with erecting the foundations of a power plant in the Bulgarian countryside. Led by foreman Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek), the crew are loud, boorish and disrespectful of the neighbouring village locals. They ignorantly plant a German flag at their camp and harass local women at a nearby river. Meinhard, a quiet, reserved individual, finds himself struggling to fit in. He doesn’t share the group’s disdain for the locals and, despite the language barrier, he slowly warms himself to some of the Bulgarian villagers, particularly local...

Pastiches, homages, and carbon copies of films made years, decades, and movements ago clog today’s cinema. Art house fare as diverse and varied as Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), Queen of Earth (2015), The Death of Louis Xiv (2016), The Untamed (2016), and First Reformed (2017) all draw from a—now sizeable—history of cinema, for better or for worse. Add Valeska Grisebach’s Western to the batch. Eleven years since her previous work, Longing (2006), Grisebach returns to cinema with a slow-boiling film that injects the DNA of the western genre into a narrative concerning inter-European relations. And to be sure, Grisebach had some movies in mind while making Western (a few low-key nods to My Darling Clementine here and there), but as she told Daniel Kasman on this site, “it was more like they were traveling with [her] while [she] was making the film.” Western isn’t so much an homage as a muted mutation.

"You're either with us or against us." The Cinema Guild has debuted a new Us trailer for the highly praised German drama Western, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and played at every other major fest in the fall of last year. From director Valeska Grisebach, Western is a slow burn about a group of German construction workers who take on a job on the Bulgarian countryside. The men compete against each other for the attention of local women, and get into some trouble. I still think the title doesn't fit the film, but Western is a solid examination of masculinity and the hot-headedness of men. Meinhard Neumann stars, with a cast including Reinhardt Wetrek, Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, Viara Borisova, Kevin Bashev, and Aliosman Deliev. This film has received rave reviews from critics all over the world, and is worth your time to discover if you're looking for something...

For those with a sudden interest in new German cinema thanks to last year’s Toni Erdmann, the Cannes Film Festival has again selected another powerful, deeply human and intricately political drama in Valeska Grisebach’s terrific Western. Like Maren Ade, with whom she has collaborated, Grisebach has made two films—the lovely graduation short feature Be My Star (2001) and Longing (2006), a small town tale of a fireman’s love life—with long pauses in between. Western comes more than a decade after her first proper feature, and it confirms that the director is as talented as ever.The setting is a German worker camp in the modern day Bulgarian countryside, and, as as the title daringly states, this is indeed a "western." The isolated Germans are the encroaching (economic) colonizers—“we come here to work,” they say, flush with money and a reputation dating from the Second World War...