The annual film festival GERMAN CURRENTS at the legendary Egyptian Theater in Hollywood has always been one of the highlights each fall for the German-American community and for fans of European cinema alike. This year's edition presented by the Goethe-Institut L.A. in cooperation with its long-time partners American Cinemateque and Friends of Goethe as well as ARRI and media partner Deutsche Welle, offered an especially diverse and well-balanced selection of award-wining German movies. This is certainly in a large part thanks to the new Festival Director Lien Heidenreich-eleme who has been also at the helm of the Goethe-Institut since March 2018.
While her predecessor Fareed Majari often chose a veritable audience shocker for the Opening Night, Heidenreich-Seleme opted for the quirky road movie "Magical Mystery or The Return of Karl Schmidt" which brought memories of danced through techno-rave of the 90ies back the mind. With excellent acting by male lead Charly Huebner and female lead Annika Meier, who had come to L.A. to represent this tragicomedy directed by Arne Feldhusen, this was an entertaining kick off of the festival.
The opening night movie was followed by a party at the Egyptian Theater's unique court-yard where guests enjoyed Warsteiner beer, Underberg and Asbach Uralt Brandy while noshing on yummy German specialties created by the restaurant Julie's Alps in Thousand Oaks.
The festival continued on Saturday with a showcase of German short films and three feature movies, among them a real shocker, "Blue My Mind," the directional debut by Swiss writer-director Lisa Brühlmann (Winner of the Swiss Film Awards), and director Thomas Stuber's acclaimed "In the Aisles" (Best Actor German Film Awards), as well as director Christian Petzold's "Transit" which was featured in competition at the Berlinale Film Festival.
My favorite day was the third festival day which opened on a family-friendly note with a Kid's Matinee showing "The Legend of Timm Thaler" followed by the highly acclaimed feature film "3 Days of Quiberon" about the last interview of famous actress Romy Schneider - excellently portrayed by the Marie Baeumer. While the interview by German magazine "Stern" actually happened, the script and dialogues of the movie are mostly fictitious as German-Iranian director Emily Atef from Berlin explained during the Q & A after the movie. Baeumer copied the mimic, mannerism, inflection and accent of the late Austrian-born actress so well that I often caught myself thinking that I was looking at Romy Schneider herself.
The following feature "The Silent Revolution" (Das Schweigende Klassenzimmer) was another excellent production telling the true story of a class of students in 1956 in East Berlin who showed support to the participants of the Hungarian Uprising in Budapest that year and suffered severe repercussions. With its message of celebrating civilian courage, this movie was a very timely choice with regards to the current political climate in the U.S.
The festival ended on a high note at the theater of the Ace Hotel in Downtown L.A. where the audience was invited to the US premiere of the KREATUR, a movie about and by the highly acclaimed ballet company Sasha Waltz who also attended the premiere in person along with two of her producers and several of the dancers.
In addition to the festival's film programming, the annual filmmaker brunch presented in cooperation with GABA Film Initiative and this year sponsored by the Oscar-winning animation and special effects company PIXOMONDO, has become one of the highlights during the festival. This year, a tribute was paid to famous German actress Veronica Ferres who sat down with Hollywood Foreign Press Association member Dierk Sindermann for an extensive interview and talked about her new movie "Berlin, I love you" which will come out in the U.S.
Congratulations to Lien Heidenreich-Seleme and her programming team for a highlight-packed festival and a masterful selection of contemporary German language movies.
Unsere Partner
