01/02/2007

Of the nine new releases today in Germany, three eagerly awaited domestic titles have good chances of attracting filmgoers’ attention, especially as each of these has a different target audience.

The Wild Soccer Bunch 4, a new episode in the children’s football comedies directed by Joachim Masannek, whose previous editions were a hit at the box office, will most probably take the lion’s share of admissions.

In part four, the young footballers – played by the same young actors – have their hopes set on winning the Football Freestyle World Cup but in order to do so they must face the mysterious team of new wolves and the equally dangerous yet impressive Horizon.

And since one does not change a winning team, the film was once again produced by Ewa Karlström and Andreas Ulmke-Smeaton for SamFilm and released by Buena Vista.

A "wildness" of another kind prevails in Achim Bornhak's Eight Miles High (Das wilde Leben), a film on the 1968 rebellion, on release through Warner.

The Neue Bioskop Film production is a biography of Uschi Obermaier (Natalie Avelon), a sex symbol during the student movement who later became a top model and dated Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Lastly, set in the jungle of prison, Chris Kraus’ Four Minutes [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (recently nominated for the Lolas and winner of four Bavarian Film Awards) tells of the friendship between an 80 year-old pianist and a violent young woman with a real talent for music – superbly played by Monica Bleibtreu and Hannah Herzsprung, respectively.

The Kordes &Kordes Film production is being distributed by Piffl.

This week, three other European (co-)productions are hitting screens: the much awaited After the Wedding [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sisse Graum Jørgensen
interview: Susanne Bier
film profile] (see Focus) by Danish helmer Susanne Bier (distributed by Universum), Rex Bloomstein's British-made documentary KZ (dist. Salzgeber), on the Mauthausen concentration camp, and the French/US/Mali drama by Abderrahmane Sissako, Bamako [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (dist. Kairos).

(Translated from French)