19/07/2005

Germany is well represented this year in competition for the 59th Locarno Film Festival(3-13 August). Indeed, Three Degrees Colder, Florian Hoffmeister's debut feature, was selected. This film, produced by Sabotage Films, Blue Eyes Fiction, Bayerische Rundfunk and Arte, is the disturbing story of a missing person (Sebastian Blomberg) who keeps haunting the lives and thoughts of his friends (Bibiana Beglau, Johann von Bülow, Alexander Beyer) and family. Three co-productions will also screen in competition: Fratricide, by Yilmaz Arslan (whose first film, Passages, won awards in San Sebastian and Bergamo), a feature co-produced with France and Luxembourg and interpreted by non-actors where the director uses the classic patterns of tragedy to illustrate the conflict between Turks and Kurds, Keller – Teenage Wasteland, an Austrian film (Novotny Filmproduktion) co-produced by Känguruh Film (Germany) and Misami Film (Italy) where Eva Urthaler confronts a provincial teenager with urban delinquency (cf. Making of the film), as well as The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes by the Quay brothers, a British film co-produced by France and Germany.

Amongst the wholly German productions presented in Locarno, there is Between the Devil and the Wild Blue Sea, by Romuald Karmakar (video competition), Gisela, by Isabelle Stever (in the "Cinéastes du présent" section), as well as Robert Fisher's Citizen of America, a documentary screened in the ambit of the great Orson Welles retrospective. The Critics' Week will screen no less than four German films: The Max Hansen Story by Douglas Wolfsperger, Between the Lines by Thomas Hartmann, Geschlossene Gesellschaft, by Andrei Schwartz, and Wie luft zum Atmen , by Ruth Olshan.

Last but not least, Wim Wenders will receive an honorary Leopard and his latest film Don't Come Knocking [+see also:
trailer
film profile] will be screened on the Piazza Grande.

(Translated from French)