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Strong German presence at 64th Festival del Film Locarno
By Martin Blaney | September 2, 2011
In photo: Hell director Tim Fehlbaum with Hannah Herzsprung, courtesy Festival del Film Locarno
German cinema was well represented at this year’s Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13) which was Frenchman Olivier Père’s second outing as artistic director. Three German co-productions – Tawfik Abul Wael’s Last Days In Jerusalem, Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet and Mia Hansen-Love’s Goodbye First Love – were invited to screen in the festival’s International Competition which was judged by a jury headed by Portuguese producer Paolo Branco and including German actress Sandra Hüller (seen recently in the lead of Brownian Movement).
Meanwhile, the Out of Competition section presented Heidi Specogna’s Carte Blanche and the much acclaimed Dreileben trilogy by Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf and Christoph Hochhäusler (president of the jury for the Filmmakers of the Present competition), while the Leopards of Tomorrow competition featured Peter Barankowski’s Addicted (Rauschgift).
In addition,the Swiss Film Critics Association SVFJ invited two German documentaries to its highly regarded programme Semaine de la Critique: Christian Stahl’s Gangsterläufer about a petty criminal Yehya from Berlin’s Neukölln district, and Matthias Bittner’s Not In My Backyard about American society’s treatment of sex offenders and predators in Miami once they have been released from prison.
Gangsterläufer, which had been six years in the making and is Stahl’s first feature-length documentary, premiered at the Max-Ophüls Preis Film Festival in January. Not In My Backyard was the first feature-length film for Bittner who is currently studying at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. The film was produced with Berlin-based zischlermann filmproduktion.
The nightly open-air programme on Locarno’s Piazza Grande can be seen by upwards of 8,000 spectators – weather permitting. Fortunately, the German films and co-productions could be seen without the audience having to don kagoules and cower under umbrellas.
The world premiere of Morten Tyldum’s Norwegian-Danish-German co-production Headhunters was followed on the Piazza by the international premiere of feature debutant Tim Fehlbaum’s post-apocalyptic thriller Hell, starring Hannah Herzsprung, Stipe Erceg and Angela Winkler. The film received a Young German Cinema Award at this year’s Filmfest München and is being released in German cinemas on September 22 (a review of the film and interview with Fehlbaum will appear in the next print issue of KINO German Film in November).
There were two magical evenings on the Piazza for screenings of Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre and Achim von Borries‘ Four Days In May (Vier Tage im Mai). The audience broke out into applause on the appearance of the veteran rocker Little Bob in Kaurismäki’s film which was introduced in person by actors Kati Outinen and André Wilms.
The world premiere of von Borries‘ film was accompanied in Locarno by the lead actors Aleksei Guskov (also producer of the film with X Filme Creative Pool’s Stefan Arndt), Grigory Dobrygin and Ivan Shvedoff. The story of a Soviet captain and a young 13-year-old German boy (impressively played by newcomer Pavel Wenzel) in the final days oft he Second World War was warmly received by the open-air audience.
In addition, Berlin-based production house Vandertastic Films was on the Piazza with the world premiere of Patricia Mazuy’s Sport de Filles, starring Bruno Ganz who was the subject of a three-film tribute (Der Untergang, Die Marquise von O. and Messer im Kopf) in recognition of his Lifetime Achievement Leopard, and producer Peter Rommel was in town for the world premiere of his co-production of Stephane Robelin’s And If We All Live Together as the festival’s closing film.
Moreover, a Special Programme presented restored prints of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Despair and Daniel Schmid’s Schatten der Engel, adapted from Fassbinder’s play Garbage, the City and Death. Juliane Lorenz, director of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, DoP Renato Berta and actress Ingrid Caven introduced the screening of Schmid’s film in person.
At the final awards ceremony, Mia Hansen-Love received a Special Mention for Goodbye First Love, while HFF Munich student Peter Barankowski’s Addicted (Rauschgift) was awarded the prize for the best international short in the Leopards of Tomorrow Competition.
Meanwhile, early in the week, Cologne-based producer Johannes Rexin and his director Anup Singh won a development grant worth € 7,000 from France’s CNC for their project The Gentle Dance (Lasya) which was presented to potential co-producers at this year’s Open Doors co-production lab.
Open Doors was dedicated this year to projects from India and was attended by several producers from Germany including Nicole Gerhards, Andreas Eicher and Fabian Massah.
As many observers noted, artistic director Olivier Père seemed to have managed the difficult balancing act of offering glamour, on the one hand, as well as the opportunity to discover new talents and forms of expression.
Harrison Ford, Isabelle Huppert, Claudia Cardinale, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Craig were among the „big names“ who came to Lake Maggiore this year to add some razzamatazz to proceedings, but, away from the hullabaloo, there was plenty to keep the cineastes satisfied in the International Competition and sidebars as well as the Retrospective dedicated to the legendary director Vincente Minnelli of An American In Paris fame.
“What we achieved this year is not only the result of 12 months’ work, but rather culminating from the past two years since some things cannot be achieved straightaway,” Père said in interview. “It is our goal to make Locarno a great international festival with ambitious content and an identity as a place where you can make discoveries, to be the place for new talents, new countries and new kinds of films.”
“At the same time, we are not a specialised festival – we love all kinds of cinema and want to make Locarno a great party for all film lovers, those who like to scout for new talents as well as for celebrating great popular cinema whether it is of the past, present or the future.”
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