Four German co-productions at the Directors' Fortnight and the Critics' Week
by German Films
- The independent sections of the Cannes Film Festival will be featuring two German co-produced features and two shorts
Both independent sections of the Cannes International Film Festival, the Directors' Fortnight (15-25 May) and the Critics' Week (15-23 May), have announced their programmes, which include a total of four German co-productions. The former will be featuring a short film and two features, while the latter will screen one short.
The short film Torn, by Elmar Imanov and Engin Kundag (Germany/Azerbaijan), is about two lives – that of a man and that of a child – and about the worlds of children and adults, two realities that exist simultaneously but remain separate. Both directors studied at the Cologne International Film School, and Imanov, who has been living in Germany since 1998, won the Student Oscar in 2012 with The Swing of the Coffin Maker, produced by Color of May (Cologne), as is the case for Torn.
The selection of the Directors' Fortnight also includes Gett: the Trial of Viviane Amsalem [+see also:
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The Critics' Week will show Una Gunjak's The Chicken, a German/Croatian co-production (co-produced by Zak Film Productions on the German side), which was awarded the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize for International Cooperation and focuses on Selma, a little girl living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War who is given a live chicken as a present for her sixth birthday. When she realises that the chicken is to be killed to feed the family, she sets it free, unaware of just how high the stakes will become.
In addition, the jury for the Sony CineAlta Discovery Prize at the Critics' Week includes German producer Benny Drechsel (Rohfilm).
At the Cannes Film Market, German Films will gather together 35 titles under the “New German Films” label and will organise its 14th German Pavilion (together with FOCUS Germany and representatives of the seven leading film funds in the country).
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