Türkisch für Anfänger: cult TV show hits the big screen

by Bénédicte Prot

16/03/2012 - What a great ending to the winter for Constantin who in Germany (yesterday) and Austria (today) released the long-awaited Türkisch für Anfänger [trailer], an adaptation by Bora Dagtekin of the popular television series of the same name that she created. The film, produced by Rat Pack Filmproduktion, brings together the same team and actors in the confrontation between the Schneider and Öztürk families. After both families' children disappear in the same plane crash, the families have to join forces to find them, while the children must work together to survive on the desert island where they have landed.

In Germany, where varied documentaries have been released (including the intriguing German-Swiss Goodnight Nobody by Jacqueline Zünd distributed by mixtvision), Farbfilm has its bets on a fiction feature produced by the Munich-based SiMa Film, Kaddisch für einen Freund by Leo Khasin, in which a young agressive Palestinian ends up befriending a old Jewish Russian man. W-Film has released the light Austrian romantic comedy Barylli's Baked Beans [trailer], for which Gabriel Barylli, the Viennese star who received the National Cross of Honour for Arts and Sciences, wrote the screenplay adapting it from his very popular play Ohio, wieso?, was the director, and also the main actor.

NFP is releasing another great success in Germany: the Norwegian thriller Headhunters [trailer] by Morten Tyldum, adapted from the bestseller by Jo Nesbø. For a younger audience, there is The Liverpool Goalie [trailer] by Arild Andresen (distr. Drei-Freunde), also from Norway.

And there is good news for German amateurs of European cinema. Basis has released the award-winning The Turin Horse [trailer, film focus] (notably coproduced by the Berlin-based zero one film), a film that started off its career at the Berlinale 2011 but marks the end of its author's, Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, and Arsenal has launched into spring with the optimistic The Snows of Kilimandjaro [trailer, film focus] by French director Robert Guédiguian.

The Austrian public will also be able to discover this last film thanks to Thimfilm, as well as a different film from Norway, this time a children's film, Totally True Love [trailer] by Anne Sewitsky, distributed by Einhorn.

Among the new releases in Austria also are acclaimed Berlinale laureate Barbara [trailer, film focus] by German director Christian Petzold (distr. Stadtkino), and the pan-European thriller-documentary about the darker side of the games of influence inside the European Union, The Brussels Business by Friedrich Moser and Matthieu Lietaert (Thimfilm).

(Translated from French)