18/04/2008

Mike Marzuk’s seasonal romantic comedy Sommer (“Summer”) was released yesterday in Germany (Walt Disney) and Austria (Buena Vista).

This film for teenagers, produced by Munich-based Sam Film, recounts the summer of 15-year-old Tim (played by Jimi Blue Ochsenknecht, well-known among young audiences for his role as Leon in The Wild Soccer Bunch series). The young boy has moved around a lot due to his father’s job and this time has to leave Berlin for an island in the North Sea, where he immediately takes against the leader of a gang of surfers, all the more so as he is in love with the latter’s girlfriend.

German audiences will also be able to discover Helmut Christian Görlitz’s Fleisch ist mein Gemüse, in which actor Maxim Mehmet retraces the difficult career of a young musician from Hamburg in the 1980s. From small village concerts to thwarted dreams, he ends up finding his way in life. This NDF production is released by Universal.

Falcom are releasing Özgür Yildirim’s Chiko [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which looks at how an ambitious young man rises the ranks of Hamburg’s drug world. The film – which stars Denis Moschitto and Moritz Bleibtreu – was produced by Corazón International, Fatih Akin’s company.

GMfilms are launching the documentary Sweep It Up, Again, the final part in Gerd Kroske’s trilogy about the socially precarious situation of a family in Leipzig.

Reverse Angle are releasing Clint Eastwood’s German/US musical documentary Piano Blues.

European films feature heavily on the line-up in both Austria and Germany. In Austria, two French films are hitting screens: Emanuelle Cuau’s Very Well, Thank You [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Gilbert Melki and Sandrine Kiberlain (released by Stadtkino); and Antoine de Caunes’ Twice Upon a Time [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Jean Rochefort and Charlotte Rampling (released by Filmladen).

Meanwhile, German viewers can choose between French title Actresses [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s second directorial effort (released by Piffl); Jan Verheyen’s Belgian drama Gilles, in which a little boy who is passionate about football suddenly has to cope with the death of his father (released by Alpha Medienkontor); the impressive Khadak [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile] by Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens, a European co-production released by Farbfilm; and Thomas Hämmerli’s Swiss documentary full of black humour Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche (released by Neue Visionen).

B

(Translated from French)