(Cineuropa) German cinema - "Enfant Terrible" and "Nightlife" on display in Paris
06/10/2020 - The 25th German Cinema Film festival, organised by German Films, opens tomorrow in the French capital
Recipient of the Cannes 2020 Official Selection label, Oskar Roehler’s Enfant terrible [+] revisits via fiction Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s early days as a theatre director, and will open the 25th German Cinema Film Festival tomorrow. The event, taking place until 13 October in Paris, at the Arlequin cinema, is organised by German Films in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, and will feature a selection of 13 feature films representing the diversity of the recent German production.
Standing out among the eight other titles in the Panorama programme are six films directed by women: I Was at Home, but... [+] by Angela Schanelec (Silver Bear winner for Best Director last year at the Berlinale, distributed by Shellac in French cinemas on 25 November), Maryam Zaree’s Born in Evin [+] (winner of the Lola 2020 award for Best Documentary), Daphne Charizani’s Sisters Apart [+] (unveiled at Perspektive Deutsches Kino at the 2020 Berlinale), When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit [+] by Caroline Link (winner of the Award for Best Children’s Film at the 2020 German Film awards), Walchensee Forever [+] by Janna Ji Wonders (discovered at the Berlinale and winner at both the Biografilm Festival and in the Newcomers competition at Thessaloniki) and Katrin Gebbe’s Pelican Blood [+] (which opened the Orizzonti section last year in Venice). Also in Panorama are Zwischen uns die Mauer [+] by Norbert Lechner and Nightlife [+] by Simon Verhoeven.
The festival will close with The German Lesson [+] by Christian Schwochow (adapted from Siegfried Lenz’s eponymous novel) which will be released in France by Wild Bunch, and a special, preview screening of the documentary Paris Calligrammes [+] by Ulrike Ottinger (unveiled at the Berlinale and released in French cinemas on 14 October by Dean Medias). Also worth noting is a cycle of films about the fight against the hatred towards and everyday exclusion of minorities, featuring three films: Visar Morina’s Exil [+] (discovered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, before playing in the Panorama section at the Berlinale), the documentary Becoming Black by Ines Johnson-Spain and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974).
Finally, the festival programme includes 13 short films, including the best 2020 films from German films schools (Next Generation) and the best films with a runtime below five minutes (Short Tiger Award).