23/06/2005

The Summer season starts today with two American productions and four European (co-)productions, two of which are German. The German public will be able to discover Angel's Fall (Greece/Turkey), a drama by Semih Kaplanoglu, The Statement, a thriller by Norman Jewison written by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) starring Michael Caine, Am I sexy?, andBerlin Stories.

Am I sexy? (Bin ich sexy?), a comic drama by Katinka Feistl produced by Maran Film in association with ZDF and MFG, is about a teenage girl who lives with her single mother and her younger siblings in a rich neighbourhood. Her dream is to become Miss Baden-Würtemberg but her encounter with a young Arab and a medical diagnosis change her prospects. This film, which manages to transpose a typically American genre into a German context, is distributed by Arsenal.

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Berlin Stories (Stadt als Beute), screened this year in Berlin (Forum), is a three-part film written and directed by Irene von Alberti, Miriam Dehne and Esther Gronenborn, three Berliners whose careers started in the 90's. The script, inspired by René Polleschs' play, follows, successively, the wanderings of three young comedians in the streets of Berlin. Lizzy (Inga Busch) ends up finding through someone else's life the inspiration her carreer needed; Marlon (Richard Kropf), who is too academic, wanders in the city to inhale its raw energy; Ohboy (David Scheller), during a walk on Potsdamer Strasse, finally manages to conquer his stage-fright. This film, produced (and sold) by Filmgalerie 451 and co-produced by ZDF, was supported by Baden-Württemberg and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Neue Visionen handles distribution.

(Translated from French)