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RELEASES Germany

Gravity and Americans in Paris out this week

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Hitting screens alongside five US titles and a Turkish comedy distributed by Kinostar, this week’s new European releases are thin on the ground but not insignificant.

The only German feature in the line-up, Maximilian Erlenwein’s Gravity [+see also:
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, should indeed attract scores of viewers. This is because this debut feature (and final-year student project), scripted by its young director, stars Jürgen Vogel in one of the two lead roles, triumphed at the latest Max Ophüls Festival (where it won the main trophy, Best Screenplay and two acting awards) and has an intriguing storyline.

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Gravity centres on the impact on a bank worker (Fabian Hinrichs) of seeing a disappointed client commit suicide before his eyes. This ordinary man then joins forces with crook Vince Holland (Vogel) and starts to rob his richest clients to give to the poor, discovering his dark side in the process. Produced by Berlin-based Frisbeefilms, the film is distributed by Farbfilm.

Also hitting German theatres are two local documentaries. Hajo Schomerus’s Im Haus Meines Vaters sind Viele Wohnungen ("In My Father’s House, There Are Lots of Rooms"), produced by Düsseldorf’s Busse & Halberschmidt, looks at the mosaic of “rival” religious communities that live side by side around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The film is distributed by X Verleih.

Meanwhile, Andreas Nickel and Jürgen Czwienk’s Zum Dritten Pol (produced by Explorer Media) recounts the Himalaya expeditions of Günter and Hettie Dyhrenfurth, a couple of Jewish mountain climbers (who reached the summit before the Nazis) in the 1930s, followed by those of their son Norman. The title is distributed by Movienet.

The line-up of new European films is rounded off by another feature likely to win over audiences: French director Pierre Morel’s From Paris With Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. This Hollywood-style action film stars John Travolta as an unscrupulous secret agent and Jonathan Rhys-Meyer as a young diplomat who, along with his improbable partner, confronts a terrorist threat in the City of Light. Produced by Luc Besson, this film is distributed in Germany by Universum.

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(Translated from French)

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