25/06/2009

Hitting German screens today is Long Shadows [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], by acclaimed director Connie Walther (whose most recent project, Frau Böhm sagt Nein, starring Senta Berger, is currently in competition at the Ludwigshafen German Film Festival).

Unlike this year’s Oscar-nominated German hit, The Baader Meinhof Complex [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Long Shadows looks at Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorism from the victims’ point of view. The film centres on the encounter between Volker (Ulrich Noethen), a former member of the terrorist group who is released after 20 years in prison, and his fragile neighbour Valerie (Franziska Petri), whose father was killed because of Volker.

Produced by Berlin’s Next Film and Ludwigsburg-based Gambit Film, the title is being released by Salzgeber.

Meanwhile, X Verleih is launching Julie Delpy’s French/German co-production The Countess [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anna Maria Mühe
film profile], which was selected in the Panorama section at the latest Berlinale (see review). The French actress-director plays the 16th-century Hungarian countess Erzébet Bathory, known as the “bloody countess”, alongside William Hurt, Daniel Brühl and Romania’s Anamaria Marinca ( 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cristian Mungiu
interview: Oleg Mutu
film profile]).

Ursula Meier’s French/Swiss/Belgian co-production Home [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kacey Mottet Klein
interview: Thierry Spicher
interview: Ursula Meier
film profile], starring Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet, is being released by Arsenal. The film centres on a family in the country, who learn to live next to a busy motorway and develop new behaviour with regard to this source of noise, danger and dirt.

Fugu is launching Irish director Marian Quinn’s teenage-themed film, 32 A - It's a Girl Thing [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Set in Dublin in 1979, the title is about a 13-year-old schoolgirl’s first bra, first kisses and first nights out.

This week’s final European release is Petra Seeger’s Auf der Suche nach dem Gedächtnis, a cinematic portrait of psychiatrist and neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on memory (distributed by W-Film).

(Translated from French)