News

2Nd Update: Sylvester Stallone’s MGM thriller Samaritan is heading to Dec. 11, 2020. I hear that the actual reason for the move was that the Stallone film needs more time to be completed. That’s one week after the first weekend in December which following Black Friday weekend is a no man’s zone for wide entries. Samaritan becomes the only wide entry as of right now on Dec. 11. The following weekend Dec. 18 has Legendary/Warner Bros.’ Dune, Sony’s Uncharted, Paramount’s Coming to America 2, and Amblin/Fox’s Steven Spielberg West Side Story reboot.

Samaritan on its old date leaves behind Warner Bros./Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong, Sony’s Kristen Stewart-Mackenzie Davis pic Happiest Season, an untitled Amblin movie plus the expansion of Tom McCarthy’s untitled Focus Features movie.

Christmas falls on a Friday with Fox’s Ridley Scott The Last Duel opening limited, Paramount...

Steven Spielberg is arguably one of the greatest director/producers that Hollywood has ever seen. Able to deftly weave the most dramatically complex stories as well as the most light-hearted tales, he has proven a master with every genre he's tackled. The "inventor of the blockbuster" has had a prolific career that spans over five decades, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Chances are the way you view cinema has been shaped through Spielberg's movies. From E.T., to Indiana Jones, and from Jurassic Park to Amadeus and Saving Private Ryan, there's no limit to his artistic vision. Poised to release West Side Story in 2020 as well as a fifth Indiana Jones film, he will remain a titan in Tinsel Town as long as he can still pick up a camera. Here's the ultimate gift guide for the Spielberg buff.

The highly-anticipated yuletide horror haunt will then be available exclusively on Tubi exclusive 10/15 and Digital and DVD 11/5 from Uncork’d Entertainment. Starring horror icon Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), Joel Murray (Hatchet), Jeff Bryan Davis (Killer Pad), Lisa Coronado (“Twin Peaks”), and Meagan Karimi-Naser (Dead West), the frighteningly-festive horror anthology features segments directed by Jeff Ferrell …

The post Official Trailer – Holiday Hell starring genre icon Jeffrey Combs (“Re-animator”) appeared first on Hnn | Horrornews.net.

The producers of Waitress announced today a further extension to the West End run. The show will finish its run at the Adelphi Theatre on 4 July 2020. Following the West End, the production will embark on a UK-wide tour which will take in Manchester, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Glasgow, Plymouth, Dartford, Eastbourne, Liverpool, Woking, Stoke, Ipswich, Aberdeen, Bristol, Canterbury, Dublin, Nottingham, Cardiff, Truro, Llandudno, Leeds, Hull, Southend, Wolverhampton, Oxford, Edinburgh, Southampton, Northampton, Crawley, Sunderland, Wimbledon, Bromley and Sheffield. Full details of the tour will be announced soon. Following the tour producers plan for the show to return to the West End.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jedd Hughes has released the new song “Back to You,” a wistful, acoustic guitar-driven number from his upcoming album West.

Built around Hughes’ intricate fingerstyle progression, “Back to You” aims for atmosphere with light percussion and subtle shades of electric guitar, keys, and strings that drift through the mix. Hughes describes a state of mind likely familiar to many touring musicians, when myriad sounds and sights can be alienating and there’s comfort found in dreaming about home. “When the stillness of the air is cut by the siren,...

Prince completists rejoice: The majority of the singer’s recorded output during the 1990s and 2000s has finally arrived on streaming services.

Until now, a limited slice of Prince’s catalog was available on most streaming services. Luckily, that slice included his indispensable Eighties LPs like Dirty Mind, Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times. But on streaming services, the latter half of Prince’s career effectively disappeared.

That started to change in June, when Prince’s estate reached a deal with Sony to acquire the distribution rights to 35 of the singer’s albums.

The poroject is based on the classic Siegfried Lenz’s novel.

Wild Bunch has boarded German director Christian Schwochow’s adaptation of Siegfried Lenz’s classic novel The German Lesson (Deutschstunde) which begins shooting in North Rhine-Westphalia in March.

Schwochow, who has oscillated between TV and feature productions throughout his career, is at the Berlinale this year with his buzzed-about high-finance thriller TV series Bad Banks (pictured) which premieres in the festival’s TV sidebar.

One of the classic novels of post-Second World War German literature, The German Lesson explores human behaviour under a dictatorship through the tale of a young man who defies his police officer father to save the expressionist paintings of a neighbour from destruction during the Nazi reign.

Network Movie Film is producing alongside Senator Film with the support of Zdf. The picture sees Schwochow collaborate again with his mother Heide Schwochow who wrote the screenplays for three of his previous feature films: November...

What happens when a prosecutor tracks down one of the most evil criminals of the century, only to find that politics and corruption prevent him from issuing an arrest warrant? This is the true story of the hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann — not from the Pov of the Israeli agents that pounced on him in Argentina, but a German prosecutor hemmed in on all sides by Nazi sympathizers in his own government bureaucracy.

The People vs. Fritz Bauer

Blu-ray

Cohen Media Group

2015 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 105 min. / Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 30.99

Starring Burghardt Klaußner, Ronald Zehrfeld, Michael Schenck, Cornelia Goöscher, Lilith Stangenberg.

Cinematography Jens Harant

Film Editor Barbara Gies

Original Music Christopher M. Kaiser, Julian Maas

Written by Lars Kraume, Olivier Guez

Produced by Thomas Kufus

Directed by Lars Kraume

As a movie reviewer I’m attracted to certain subjects. I’ve written up...

★★★☆☆ The anxiety of a nation in a state of schizophrenia is the catalyst behind director Christian Schwochow's West (2013), a devastating portrait of a mother and son's attempt to flee the Gdr. Based on the quasi-biographical novel Lagerfeuer by Julia Franck, Schwochow's Berlin-set, Cold War drama is a slow-burner that examines the fallacy of western 'freedom' and the prejudices immigration so often incites. During the Cold War refugees from communist Eastern Europe were often sent to the Marienfelde transit camp in Berlin and it's within this inauspicious compound that the majority of West's narrative unfurls.

Friends and informants become indistinguishable in this intriguing Berlin-set counterpoint to The Lives of Others

Christian Schwochow’s adaptation of Julia Franck’s novel Lagerfeuer opens with a young woman exiting East Germany in the late 70s, then subjected to a humiliating interrogation and strip-search before finally being allowed to leave. Yet having arrived in West Berlin, where a grim refugee centre becomes her new home, Nelly (Jördis Triebel, excellent) finds the indignities of the past mirrored and repeated, with the CIA as interested as the Stasi in the increasingly foggy fate of her deceased Russian partner. “Why did you leave East Germany?” she is asked repeatedly, eventually prompting the reply: “Because of questions like these.”

Continue reading...

The director talks about the unusual film-making partnership that has now produced their fourth film, West, modelled on the family’s escape from communist East Germany

“Sex for me is like eating cake,” says one of the characters in Christian Schwochow’s second feature film, Cracks in the Shell. “I eat and I eat and I can’t get enough.” Schwochow’s mother, Heide, he says, had insisted that the line should be: “Sex is like eating butter-cream cake.” But he decided to change the script. Butter-cream was a bit much.

Talking to your parents about sex can be awkward. Discussing the minutiae of an erotic scene with your mother, one imagines, would be an ordeal. But the Schwochows do it for a living: Christian and Heide form one of the most sought-after writer-director duos in contemporary German film.

Continue reading...

Announcing the end of the Cold War in Europe and representing the long-awaited reunification of Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall became a moment in history engraved on the world’s memory as a symbol of regained freedom and the end of oppression. But while the physical division no longer exists, the fears and unaddressed violations of privacy continue to be a delicate subject 25 years after. Both sides had their own assumptions about the other. For those living on the Stasi-controlled state, the West was perceived a mythical land of prosperity and life out of the shadows. Evidently, for those in the capitalist side, the East was a gloomy house of horrors in which everything you did or said could be used against. But as with most situations, things weren't as clear cut as popular belief made out to be.

As someone who lived on both sides of the wall, German filmmaker Christian Schwochow can testify of these stereotypical assumptions. To him, Germany is still a country quietly divided by an invisible wall built on the notion that most people don't have any interest in revisiting this time period. At the same time, he is concerned about the unquestioning compliance and passiveness most citizens show. He believes we talk about the infiltration of secret organizations in people's lives as if this was a thing of the past, when it's more aggressively present today than ever before.

In his latest film "West," Nelly (Jördis Triebel), a strong-willed mother, and her son Alexej (Tristan Göbel) leave the East and arrive in the West to become refugees. Their new home offers more challenges than benefits. Nelly is constantly interrogated by an American intelligence agent John Bird (Jacky Ido) about her partner's whereabouts. In their eyes she is a criminal by default, and her every move is analyzed for any trace of subservient defiance. Meanwhile young Alexej is humiliated and mistreated based on the place he was born, even if that is simply on the other side of the infamous concrete border. Suddenly the land that promised endless wonders doesn't seen so different from the image of what the East is supposed to be like.

Schwochow talked to us from Ireland where he is working on his next film.

Carlos Aguilar : As a German filmmaker why was it important for you to make a film about this dark period in your country’s history? Was it because you felt compelled by the source material? Was it the political implications of it?

Christian Schwochow: With her novel Lagerfeuer (Campfire), upon which the film is based, Julian Franck became one of the first young writers to have a different perspective on this time period. When I read it, what she described felt, on one hand, very strange because I didn’t know about these places, these refugee centers. On the other hand, it felt very familiar because I grew up with parents who always discussed the state of the country we lived in. They were always reflecting on “Should we stay? Or should we leave?” My dad was 18-years-old when he went to prison because he tried to escape from East to West.

When I read the book for the fist time I was in first year of film school, so it was totally out of reach to get rights for a novel like that. It took me almost 10 years to come back to this story. There are so many things that people, East Germans included, experience when they have hopes for a new life somewhere else. They take a big risk to leave their country and start in a new place. Most of them succeed in starting a new life, but many have a very hard time in the process.

I feel this is a subject that becomes more and more important nowadays because we have millions of refugees all over the world who come to Western Europe or the U.S. and in many cases they are just not welcome. This combined with the special atmosphere of the Cold War years in West Berlin struck me in a way. There are so many things in this story that relate to my personal family history that once I read this novel it just never left my heart.

Aguilar: Tell me about the social mechanics in Germany today regarding the legacy of the East and the West. It's only been 25 years, relatively a short time, since Germanay became a unified country once again. Is there still a sense of separation, of families divided by this border even if it's no longer there physically?

Christian Schwochow: I think there were quiet many families who were divided. However, there are also people who lived in either side of Germany, but who never had or have any relationship with the other side whether it was former East or former West Germany. There are people who are still not very curious about how people lived on the other side of the wall. Therefore, there are still so many stereotypes and misguided ideas about both sides.

It’s still very common for someone from the West to believe that a former Eastern person or a former Eastern family must have been unhappy living in East Germany. There is also the common assumption that a family or a person who left the East and moved to the West must have found happiness right away, which was far more difficult in most cases.

Aguilar: In your film, East and West don't seem to be so different. When Nelly and Alexej arrive in West Germany they immediately become suspects by the mere fact that they came from the East. They were running from the Stasi and came to find a similarly invasive system in the West. They find another group in control that wants to know everything and hide it away.

Christian Schwochow: It’s a historical fact that the Stasi did horrible things and that they monitored a lot of people in East Germany, but I find it very interesting to think about the importance of the Western secret services back then and still working today. Since what happened with Edward Snowden we know that there is still so much going on. Secret Services are everywhere. They are part of out daily life. We just don’t really care. We are not concerned at all.

I’m not sure how it is in America, but for what I can say about Germany, most people give their information willingly to anyone who asks for it such as companies like Google. We just don’t question it anymore. When it we learned that our chancellor’s phone was being monitored there was very little debate or outcry. I can’t understand that. It’s a bit of a coincidence that my film was released in Germany just a bit after Edward Snowden share all these details with the public. Still, people don’t really discuss it for some reason.

Aguilar: In order to support the information on the novel with more historical accuracy, what kind of research did you do? Were you able to find reliable information on such a secretive time period for both sides of Germany, and most of Europe for that matter?

Christian Schwochow: There was quiet a lot of research from my part. I’m lucky to have parents who were very involved in political issues during the Cold War. I wrote this script together with my mother. In their work as journalists they always dealt with these issues related to the country’s separation. We had many friends we could talk to about this, including Julian Franck, the author of the novel.

She spent many months in a refugee center in Berlin when she was a child. I also spoke with people who worked in these camps. I spoke with an American Secret Service agent. I talked to a former headmaster of the refugee center. This was the historical and political research I did, but I also tried to get a sense of how it felt to live in a place like this.

For weeks I kept going back to this big refugee center in Berlin for people from Syria, Iraq, and other countries. I also spent time in a center for homeless people to get a sense of the physical and psychological experience these people had to go through. There are refugee and homeless centers all over the world, and it hasn’t really changed much.

Aguilar: Writing a script about a mother and a son with your mother must have been a rather interesting experience. How is your relationship with her as a creative partner? Did you infuse this work in particular with the personal experiences you share with her?

Christian Schwochow: We’ve written the scripts for my three features together, “West” included. We are already a team and it has always worked out pretty well because we share a similar sense of humor. We have a similar curiosity about the world. We have our own great way of discussing things and even fighting. There are no egos between us. Things that usually can get difficult while collaborating with another artist are not difficult between us. We left East Germany right after the fall of the wall.

My parents had submitted an application to East German government so we could leave to the West, the application was accepted on the morning of November 9 th, the historic date. We left East Germany and we move to the West. Many of the things that Nelly and her son Alexej experience in the film come from what we experienced, mostly details. My mother was always a person who wouldn’t just say what people wanted her to say. She would always question things, and she would always stand for her own opinions and ideas.

The situation Alexej experiences at the day care when he talks about his red neckerchief and what people thought it mean, it was exactly what I experienced at school. People didn’t really know how to deal with us coming from the East. Our personal experiences were of crucial help when writing this script.

Aguilar: As you mention, it seems that as time goes by young people have less and less interest in looking back at the past. In those terms, was it challenging to work with Tristan, who plays Alexej, and explain to him the historical context in which the story takes place?

Christian Schwochow: As you can imagine for a 10- year-old boy - which is how old Tristan was when we shot the film - the whole historical background is very theoretical. Working with him on certain scenes I tried to find things that he can relate to from his personal life. He lives with his mother and four siblings. Therefore, he understand that sometimes a mother can’t concentrate only on one child and she has difficulties spending time with each one as much as they need it. I tried to find ideas that he, as a 10-year-old living today, could connect with.

We taught him Russian for the part. He did pretty well. I had great adult actors like Alexander Scheer, who plays Hans, took good care of Tristan. The same goes for Jördis Triebel. She has two small children of her own, and it was very easy for her to create the mother and son relationship with him. We tried to act very professionally with the young actor. We didn’t want to treat him too much like a child.

What also helped was that we had numerous extras in this film. We had many people, adults and children, from Eastern European countries that had gone through similar experiences. Many of them share with us what they had gone through, sometimes just a few weeks before we met them to make the film together. I tried to help him create his own truth with his character by showing him as much as possible about the historical details and searching for those things that he could relate to today.

Aguilar: The character that I found the most intriguing was Hans. He becomes a target for people at this center to express their resentment and anger towards the repression they experienced in the East. Why was it important for you to include an ambiguous character like in the story?

Christian Schwochow: He is very important for me because it’s a fact that there are many people that left their lives behind and tried to start a new life in the West but didn’t succeed for many reasons. They probably were too scared, too overwhelmed, they were shocked by what they found or by how they were treated, or they just developed certain fears. Hans is one of them. I needed a character like him in the film because these people never really spoke about their experience. Still now, people assume that those who lived in the East where unhappy and once they escaped everything turned into something wonderful and free. They believe in that cliché of the “Golden West.”

The ones who didn’t succeed couldn’t tell success stories. Even today they don’t talk about it because it’s just too difficult for them to speak about plans that failed. You will hardly ever find this kind of people in the media doing interviews or mentioned in books. Hans is a voice for these people. It was also important that the man who everyone suspects of being a villain is in the end the person who carries hope for Nelly and Alexej. She decides to trust this man even though she probably will never find out what’s the truth about him.

Something very unique about Germany these days is that once you are suspected or accused of having worked for the Stassi, it doesn’t matter if you were 18-years-old, or a child, or an adult back then. Even if you deny it you won’t get rid of this suspicion. It doesn’t matter what you do, this stigma will stick with you. In some cases it’s true because there are many people who collaborated with them, but there are many other cases in which someone suspected them without proof. These people will never get rid of this.

Aguilar: Nelly is a determined woman with a strong personality. Besides what's on the novel, did any qualities from your mother or other people in your life influence you while writing this character?

Christian Schwochow: I grew up with very strong women who would have their own strong opinions and who would speak their minds. My mother is like this. My grandmother was like this. They were women who tool the risk not to fit in because they were strong characters. In East Germany it was very normal for a woman to go out and work even if she had children. A few weeks after giving birth women would return to their normal working life. We never had housewives in East Germany. Nelly is a very familiar person for me because I think I know quiet many “Nellies. ”

Looking at it from an outsider’s perspective one could say, “She is stubborn,” “She could have cooperated with them,” “She could just say what they want to hear from her,” but she is not like that. She is a woman with characteristics we usually attribute to a male protagonist. She defies this.

There is also the fact that she has a secret. I feel like we can believe everything she says in this film. I believe everything she says, but I know that for the audience she might be a character that you can’t really see through in the beginning. I hope that eventually people can feel her emotions, her trauma, and her fears. I just thought it was more interesting for her not to be nice or understandable right from the start.

Aguilar: 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall where do things stand?

Christian Schwochow: In Germany we have started to make many films about our own history. However, we tend to make the stories as simple as possible in order to find very simple truths. I made this film to provide another perspective and to show people something they have probably never heard about.

On the other hand, the secret services still play such a prominent role on our daily life and we seem not to care anymore. This has nothing to do with East and West. It’s so easy to look back and say, “There were two different countries, one was the free country and in the other people weren’t free,” but it was so much more complicated. Looking back at this time I’ve realized why it’s still so difficult for German people to communicate with each other.

At the same time I wanted to make a film about what it means to be a refugee today. I believe this will become an increasingly bigger issue for the Western World. We are still desperately trying to find answers for this problem.

For a list of screenings and events where the film will play visit Here...

The Festival of German Films in China is showing cinema from Germany this year for the second time. 16 internationally successful and award-winning films will be presented to the public and industry in the four Chinese cities of Peking, Chengdu , Shenzhen and Hangzhou in this important film market. Director Doris Dörrie is the event's patron, actor Florian Stetter and director Georg Maas will also be guests. German Films is organising the Festival of German Films in China together with the Goethe-Institut.

The festival will be opened on 14 November 2014 in Peking with a gala and the screening of "Stations of the Cross" (Ufa Fiction, cine plus Filmproduktion) in the presence of the lead actor Florian Stetter and the patron Doris Dörrie at the Broadway Cinema. The film by Dietrich Brüggemann will also open the festival in Hangzhou . "Suck Me Shakespeer" by Bora Dagtekin (Ratpack Filmproduktion, Constantin Film Produktion) will be the opening film in Chengdu and Shenzhen.

Doris Dörrie will be honored in Peking with a retrospective which will open on 15 November 2014 with "Bliss." The film-maker will then travel to Shenzhen to participate in a workshop discussion with the Chinese documentary film-makers Andrew Lone and Zhao Dayo.

Director Georg Maas will be presenting his film "Two Lives" (De/No, Zinnober Film, B&T Film), last year's German Oscar® candidate, in Chengdu , Shenzhen and Hangzhou as well as Peking .

Apart from new German productions, the Peking program will also include a newly restored version of the silent film classic

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" by Robert Wiene with musical accompaniment by the Aljoscha Zimmermann ensemble. An accompanying program at the film archive in Peking aims to promote an exchange of views and experiences between Chinese and German film-makers.Christiane von Wahlert, the managing director of Spio, will speak here with Chinese industry representatives about the age rating for feature films, and Stefan Drößler, the director of Munich 's Film Museum , will talk about the digital restoration of films.

All of the films in the program of the Festival of German Films in China :

Peking (14 – 20 November 2014 ) Broadway Cinema:

"Stations of the Cross" (Kreuzweg) by Dietrich Brüggemann (Ufa Fiction, cine plus Filmproduktion) (opening film)

"Home from Home" (Die Andere Heimat) by Edgar Reitz (De/Fr, Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion)

"Suck Me Shakespeer" (Fack Ju Gohte) von Bora Dagtekin (Rat Pack Filmproduktion, Constantin Film Produktion)

"The Woman Who Dares" (Die Frau Die Sich Traut) by Marc Rensing (Zum Goldenen Lamm Filmproduktion)

"Hanna's Journey" (Hannas Reise) by Julia von Heinz (2 Pilots Filmproduction, Kings&Queens Filmproduktion)

"Master of the Universe" by Marc Bauder (De/At, bauderfilm)

"Broken Glass Park" (Scherbenpark) by Bettina Blümner (Eyeworks Film Gemini)

"Two Lives" (Zwei Leben) by Georg Maas (De/No, Zinnober Film, B&T Film)

"Inbetween Worlds" (Zwischen Welten) by Feo Aladag (Independent Artists Filmproduktion, Geißendorfer Film- und Fernsehproduktion)

German School - Peking : Doris Dörrie retrospective:

"The Whole Shebang" (Alles Inklusive) by Doris Dörrie (Olga Film)

"The Hairdresser" (Die Friseuse) by Doris Dörrie (Collina Filmproduktion)

"Bliss" (Gluck) by Doris Dörrie (Constantin Film Produktion, Rainer Curdt Filmproduktion)

"Cherry Blossoms" (Kirschbluten- Hanami) by Doris Dörrie (Olga Film)

German Embassy:

"Beloved Sisters" (Die Geliebten Schwestern) by Dominik Graf (De/At, Bavariafilmverleih- und Produktion, Senator Film, Kiddinx Filmproduktion)

"West" (Westen) by Christian Schwochow (zero one film, Terz Film, öFilm, Senator Film)

Peking Film Archive:

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" ( Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari) by Robert Wiene (Decla-Film)

-Chengdu (November 16 – 23, 2014) / Shenzhen (November 18 – 25, 2014):

"Suck Me Shakespeer" (Fack Ju Gohte, opening film) von Bora Dagtekin (Rat Pack Filmproduktion, Constantin Film Produktion)

"Home from Home" (Die Andere Heimat) by Edgar Reitz (De/Fr, Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion)

"The Woman Who Dares" (Die Frau Die Sich Traut) by Marc Rensing (Zum Goldenen Lamm Filmproduktion)

"Hanna's Journey" (Hannas Reise) by Julia von Heinz (2 Pilots Filmproduction, Kings&Queens Filmproduktion)

"Master of the Universe" by Marc Bauder (De/At, bauderfilm)

"Two Lives" (Zwei Leben) by Georg Maas (De/No, Zinnober Film, B&T Film)

"Inbetween Worlds" (Zwischen Welten)) by Feo Aladag (Independent Artists Filmproduktion, Geißendorfer Film- und Fernsehproduktion)

-Hangzhou (20. – 29. November 2014 ):

"Stations of the Cross" by Dietrich Brüggemann (Ufa Fiction, cine plus Filmproduktion) (opening film)

"Home from Home" (Die Andere Heimat) by Edgar Reitz (De/Fr, Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion)

"Suck Me Shakespeer" (Fack Ju Gohte) by Bora Dagtekin (Rat Pack Filmproduktion, Constantin Film Produktion)

"The Woman Who Dares" (Die Frau Die Sich Traut) by Marc Rensing (Zum Goldenen Lamm Filmproduktion)

"Hanna's Journey" (Hannas Reise) by Julia von Heinz (2 Pilots Filmproduction, Kings&Queens Filmproduktion)

"Master of the Universe" by Marc Bauder (De/At, bauderfilm)

"Two Lives" (Zwei Leben) by Georg Maas (De/No, Zinnober Film, B&T Film)

"Inbetween Worlds" (Zwischen Welten) by Feo Aladag (Independent Artists Filmproduktion, Geißendorfer Film- und Fernsehproduktion)

Further information about the festival can be found at www.festivalofgermancinema.com and in the festival brochure .

The Festival of German Films in China is supported by the German Embassy in Peking .

Sponsors of German Films and the Goethe Institut at the festival are: Audi, Kempinski Hotels, Lufthansa Center and Arri

The festival's partners are: The Art Gallery of Sichuan University, Beijing Film Academy , China Film Archive, Bookworm, the German Embassy School , EU Film Festival, Labor Berlin, Oca, Ucat and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation

Media partners: MTime, Movie and Ent Qq

Cinema partners: Palace, Moma, Broadway and IMAX

China is a promising film market with an enormous potential for growth. German Films has been active in the Middle Kingdom for 11 years and is represented there in all affairs by Anke Redl. Apart from the Focus Germany at the Shanghai International Film Festival, German Films also regularly supports the presence of German films at the Shanghai TV Festival.

Further information about China 's film market in the German Films market study.

On German Films:

German Films Service + Marketing is the national information and advisory center for the international distribution of German films. The aim of German Films' activities is to raise the level of awareness for German cinema abroad via information services, lobbying, PR and marketing measures and to make it visible in the international media arena.

Website: www.german-films.de

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/German-Films

Twitter: https://twitter.com/German_Films

Instagram: http://instagram.com/germanfilms...

This weekend is shaping up to mirror early fall, when specialty distributors packed theaters with new titles. Many of those disappeared quickly, and this weekend could be similar as companies usher in about a dozen limited-release theatrical newcomers. Focus Features’ The Theory Of Everything, however, has amassed a good amount of attention. Directed by Oscar winner James Marsh (Man On Wire), the Stephen Hawking biopic is opening two months after its Toronto debut. Two notable nonfiction titles also join the fray this weekend: Cinema Guild’s Actress, from director Robert Greene, and Zipporah Films’ National Gallery by nonfiction maverick Frederick Wiseman. Both deserve attention as the awards-race heats up. Two years after the theatrical bow of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President is the focus of Amplify’s The Better Angels — though it focuses a very different phase of his life. Distrib Films is opening Italian political...

In this insightful immigration drama, what surprises Nelly Senff (Jördis Triebel) about the West Berlin emergency camp where she takes shelter in 1978 is how much it resembles the East Germany she recently fled. The clinical examination Nelly is required to pass upon arrival (complete with lice check) is no less humiliating than the "routine" strip search she endured before being allowed to pass through the Berlin Wall. The incessant questioning by camp-based security services about the Russian-born father of her son Alexej (Tristan Göbel) reminds her of the Stasi inquiries following her boyfriend's reported death. A naive Nelly doesn't always tell immigration officials what they want to hear, and her adjustment is rocky and painful, her euphoria tempered with regret ...

Independent production and distribution company Main Street Films (which recently had a domestic success with the male stripper doc "La Bare") will theatrically release Christian Schwochow’s acclaimed spy drama "West" across the U.S. on November 7. Set during the Berlin Wall-era, the film’s release date will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9. "West" was also one of the films shortlisted to be Germany’s candidate for the Foreign Language Academy Award.

The film was also part of the Kino! Fetival of German Films, which we covered back in June. Read More Here

"'West' is a strong and emotional film that accurately portrays the fear and tension that existed between the East and the West during the Berlin Wall-era and is an important reminder of Germany’s recent history,” said Craig Chang, Chairman of Main Street Films.

“This is a very personal film for me,” said Christian Schwochow, director. “My family left in 1989 just after the wall came down, but it was still a time of great uncertainty. All we had was hope that life would be better and that’s a great motivator. Releasing "West" during the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is very special, especially after having the opportunity to collaborate with my mother, who wrote the screenplay.”

Winning the Fipresci prize at the 2013 Montreal Film Festival and the Best Actress award for Jôrdis Triebel at the 2014 German Film Awards, West is based on Julia Franck’s autobiographical novel Camp Fire and adapted by the director’s mother and regular screenwriting partner, Heide Schwochow.

Set during the late 1970s, three years after Nelly Senff’s boyfriend Wassilij’s apparent death, she decides to escape from behind the Berlin Wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij’s mysterious disappearance. Fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.

"West" stars Jördis Triebel, Alexander Scheer, Tristan Göbel, and Jacky Ido (who is currently the lead actor in Luc Besson's TV series Taxi Brooklyn), and is produced by ö Filmproduktion’s Katrin Schlösser, zero one film’s Thomas Kufus, and Terz Filmproduktion’s Christoph Friedel. Helge Sasse of Senator Film Produktion, Barbara Buhl of Wdr, Stefanie Groß of Swr, Cooky Ziesche of rbb, and Georg Steinert of Arte are co-producers.

Take a look at this exclusive trailer courtesy of Main Street Films

About Main Street Films

Established in 2007, Main Street Films is an independent film entertainment company and has emerged as one of the industry's most exciting production, acquisition, and distribution driven ensembles. On the distribution side, Main Street Films focuses on creating and distributing high quality films across multiple genres for diverse audiences within the entertainment space. Opening later this year is the critically acclaimed The Turning starring Oscar® winner Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, based on Tim Winton’s award-winning collection of short stories.

Main Street Films will theatrically release Christian Schwochow’s spy drama and German foreign-language Oscar submission West in the Us on November 7.

The film takes place during the Berlin Wall era and the release commemorates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9.

“West is a strong and emotional film that accurately portrays the fear and tension that existed between the East and the West during the Berlin Wall era and is an important reminder of Germany’s recent history,” said Main Street Films chairman Craig Chang.

“West is a very personal film for me,” said Schwochow. “My family left in 1989 just after the wall came down, but it was still a time of great uncertainty. All we had was hope that life would be better and that’s a great motivator.

The director’s mother and regular screenwriting partner Heide Schwochow adapted the screenplay from Julia Franck’s autobiographical novel Camp Fire...

A total of 15 films have been submitted for consideration.

German producers have submitted 15 films for consideration to German Films as the country’s entry for the 87th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

An independent expert jury will decide on Aug 27 which film is to be sent into the race for Germany.

The following titles were submitted:

Home From Home – Chronicle Of A Vision

Edgar Reitz (De/Fr, Erf Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion)

Beloved Sisters

Dominik Graf (Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktion)

Finsterworld

Frauke Finsterwalder (Walker + Worm Film)

Hanna’s Journey

Julia von Heinz (De/Il, 2 Pilots Filmproduction)

Im Weissen Rössl – Wehe Du Singst

Christian Theede (Ziegler Film)

Stations Of The Cross

Dietrich Brüggemann (Ufa Fiction)

Run Boy Run

Pepe Danquart (De/Fr, bittersuess pictures, A Company Filmproduktion, B.A. Produktion, Quinte Film)

The Last Mentsch

Pierre-Henri Salfati (Elsani Film)

Stereo

Maximilian Erlenwein (Frisbeefilms, Kaissar Film, Wild Bunch Germany)

West

Christian Schwochow (zero one film, Terz...

A total of 15 films have been submitted for consideration.

German producers have submitted 15 films for consideration to German Films as the country’s entry for the 87th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

An independent expert jury will decide on Aug 27 which film is to be sent into the race for Germany.

The following titles were submitted:

Home From Home – Chronicle Of A Vision

Edgar Reitz (De/Fr, Erf Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion)

Beloved Sisters

Dominik Graf (Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktion)

Finsterworld

Frauke Finsterwalder (Walker + Worm Film)

Hanna’s Journey

Julia von Heinz (De/Il, 2 Pilots Filmproduction)

Im Weissen Rössl – Wehe Du Singst

Christian Theede (Ziegler Film)

Stations Of The Cross

Dietrich Brüggemann (Ufa Fiction)

Run Boy Run

Pepe Danquart (De/Fr, bittersuess pictures, A Company Filmproduktion, B.A. Produktion, Quinte Film)

The Last Mentsch

Pierre-Henri Salfati (Elsani Film)

Stereo

Maximilian Erlenwein (Frisbeefilms, Kaissar Film, Wild Bunch Germany)

West

Christian Schwochow (zero one film, Terz...

Refugee Nelly in pursuit of 12 stamps: "The reality was that people either came out of the camps after one or two weeks."

I met with director Christian Schwochow in the lobby of the Malton Hotel, a couple of days before West (Westen), starring Jördis Triebel with Tristan Göbel, Alexander Scheer, Jacky Ido and Carlo Ljubek, opened this year's edition of Kino! Festival of German Films in New York at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Over coffee, I found out that Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three from 1961, starring James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive, and Christian Petzold's Romy Schneider costume research for Barbara cannot even start to compete with a candy wrapper as inspiration for an East German boy. See Stephanie Soechtig's vital documentary Fed Up. I was reminded that Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu were a successful comedy team and that the stigma of day care...

Playing at the Museum of the Moving Image and the Quad Cinema in New York June 13-19 the Kino! Festival Of German Films returns for its 36th year. Once again, the festival continues to offer the best in German cinema produced in the last year. The program features documentaries and narratives that not only focus on the German experience but also on its filmmakers’ points of view on what happens around the world. Quality is always a given with Kino and these wide-ranging stories are no exception. Some revisit the country’s historical past, others travel to distant lands in search of images, and there are also those that feel specific to our time. Here are some highlights of what we've seen so far with some additions to come soon.

For more information on the festival visit Here

West

Dir. Christian Schwochow

In search of a more promising and free life for her and her son, Nelly Sneff (Jördis Triebel) a young East German chemist flees to the more modernized West side. Even though she speaks the same language and is as German as everyone else living in the communal living facilities for refugees, Nelly finds it difficult to adapt to the new system. Ironically, she comes to realize that she is seen as the enemy on this side of the wall. The constant questioning about the whereabouts and affiliation of her Soviet partner, who until now she believed dead, take a toll on her already complex life putting her in a state of paranoia. Her son Alexej (Tristan Göbel), who is bullied at school, befriends a neighbor, Hans ( Alexander Scheer) whose good intentions will put Nelly on the edge. Distrust is at the core of Schwochow’s film that plays as thoughtful answer to films like “The Lives of Others” and “Barbara.” While those examples condemned the system enforced by the Stasi, in “West” the tables are flipped. Nelly feels unsafe, watched, and harassed in a land that was supposed to be against those practices. Triebel's intense performance escalates from hopeful to enraged in a marvelously directed story about an unexamined subject within German history.

Nan Goldin : I Remember Your Face

Dir. Sabine Lidl

In a concisely executed documentary that runs just over 60 minutes, director Sabine Lidl manages to capture the essence of renowned photographer Nal Goldin. Given that her friendships are the inspiration and subjects for her work, the filmmaker follows the eccentric artist as she visits old friends and reminisces about their youth, her failed attempts at seducing attractive gay men, and their role in her career. Her photos are raw and vivid. They shine with colorful nuances that only intimacy can provide. Drunk, naked, and unique people experience sadness and joy in front of her camera. Goldin’s extravagant collections and her turbulent past with drugs and alcohol also make an appearance in this short portrait of a fascinating woman across her beloved Berlin and other European cities.

Art War

Dir. Marco Wilms

While shot by a German filmmaker, the film is very similar to the Academy Awards-nominated film “The Square.” It follows the revolutionary youth of Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that brought down the Mubarak regime. While the aforementioned film tries to depict a holistic picture of the events, the deaths, and the shaky political processes that followed, Wilms decides to focus on the artistic expression that emerged from the movement. Including politically charged rap songs, and more extensively graffiti, the documentary advocates for the youth’s effort to protests by peaceful means. However, it also points at the non-stop attacks by Islamist conservative groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Among their many undertakings, the art on Mohamed Mahmoud Street near the iconic Tahrir Square is of particular importance because it is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the carnage. Young Egyptians turned martyrs are immortalized on the city’s walls as constant reminder of an incessant struggle. There are clearly a great number of similarities between the two films, and though this is less achieved in scope, it can definitely work as a complementary piece.

Finsterworld

Dir. Frauke Finsterwalder

With a multi-story concept that scrutinizes modern German society, the tonally eclectic “Finsterworld” provides some vexed assumptions about the country’s history of violence. A high school class is taking a fieldtrip to a concentration camp, Dominik (Leonard Scheicher) and his unofficial girlfriend Natalie (Carla Juri) are enjoying the day despite having to deal with obnoxious spoiled kid Maximilian (Jakub Gierszal). Meanwhile Franziska (Sandra Hüller), an pretentious aspiring filmmaker wants to capture something profound, inevitably her egocentric personality crashes with her loving boyfriend police officer Tom (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is also a closeted “furry.” Then there is Claude (Michael Maertens), a lonely masseur specialized in feet, and his friendship with elderly woman Frau (Margit Carstensen). Lastly, there are the Sandbergs (Corinna Harfouch &Bernhard Schütz), a wealthy couple on the road who encounter a difficult situation. Touching on the subject of German identity having Hitler as only representative figure and being a nation defined by guilt, Finsterwalder’s feature is heavily provocative. It’s strange tone that shifts between absurd comedy and gruesome violence can come across as uncomfortable or even offensive, but there are a handful of brilliant moments that make the film rather compelling.

German director Christian Schwochow will present his film West and participate in a Q&A on the opening night gala of Kino! Festival Of German Films in New York on June 12.

West won the Fipresci prize at the 2013 Montreal Film Festival and is based on Julia Franck’s novel Lagerfeuer.

Heide Schwochow adapted the Berlin Wall-era mystery starring Jördis Triebel, Alexander Scheer, Tristan Göbel and Jacky Ido.

Ö Filmproduktion’s Karin Schlösser produced with zero one film’s Thomas Kufus and terz Filmproduktion’s Christoph Friedel.

Main Street Films chairman Craig Chang and president Harrison Kordestani plan to release the film theatrically later this year.

After its previous 35-year relationship with the Museum of Modern Art, the 2014 edition of the Kino! Festival of German Films in New York reboots in new locations, but still continues its mission of bringing notable recent German films to New York City. The festival's new home this year is the Quad Cinema, where the program will run from June 13 through June 19. This year's eclectic lineup includes features, documentaries, and award-winning shorts.Kino! kicks off on June 12 with its opening night film, Christian Schwochow's West, which will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The festival also includes the Us theatrical release of Sabine Lidl's documentary Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face, an engaging portrait of the influential photographic artist, which...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Toronto -- The French equestrian drama Jappeloup from Quebec director Christian Duguay has been added to the competition lineup at the Montreal World Film Festival, which includes the previously announced U.S. title The Red Robin. Written by and starring Guillaume Canet, the French-Canadian period drama and Pathe release joins 19 other features in the world competition and festival lineup in Montreal, unveiled Tuesday. These include a slew of European films, including Gregor Schnitz' Spieltrieb, from Germany, and Westen, a Cold War drama by Christian Schwochow. Story: Montreal Festival Adds Judd Hirsch's 'The Red Robin' to Competition Slate France is

read more...