17/07/2014 - The 67th edition of the international Swiss festival will present a good number of German (co-)productions out in the open, as well as at its other venues

With the world premiere of Christian Zübert and Florian Mischa Böder's latest works, plus three high-profile German co-productions on the Piazza Grande – out of a total of 23 German (co-)productions – the presence of director Thomas Arslan in the jury and the Lifetime Achievement Award to be given to Armin Mueller-Stahl, Germany has a strong team at the 67th Locarno Film Festival (6-16 August).

Christian Zübert's tragicomedy Tour de Force (Majestic Filmproduktion), starring top-notch thespians Florian David Fitz, Julia Koschitz and Jürgen Vogel, revolves around Hannes, who goes on a cycling tour with his friends each year, but this time he has sad news for them: whilst travelling through Belgium, the group learns that he is suffering from an incurable illness and wants to avail himself of the assisted suicide programme there.

Florian Mischa Böder's second feature-length film (on his own), intriguingly titled A Hitman's Solitude Before the Shot (HUPE Film- und Fernsehproduktion), features the excellent Benno Führmann as a hired killer going through an existential crisis. Working for the EU, he has been waiting eight years for his first job. He receives the call on the very evening when he is out on a date, which leads to an odyssey where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

Also to be seen on the Piazza Grande are Clouds of Sils Maria [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charles Gillibert
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile] by Olivier Assayas (co-produced by Pallas Film), Dancing Arabs by Eran Riklis (a Riva Filmproduktion and Heimatfilm co-production) and Love Island by Jasmila Zbanic (co-produced by Komplizen Film). 

The International Competition features two German co-productions: Syllas Tzoumerkas' A Blast (co-produced by Unafilm) and Martín Rejtman's Dos Disparos (co-produced by Pandora Filmproduktion) – and so does the Filmmakers of the Present Competition, with Oscar Ruiz Navia's Los Hongos and Liew Seng Tat's Lelaki Harapen Dunia. The same goes for the independent Critics’ Week section, which will present Zuzanna Solakiewicz's 15 Corners of the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Hongjie Xu's On the Rim of the Sky.

Finally, Cem Kaya's documentary Remake, Remix, Ripoff (UFA Fiction), about the history of the plagiarism and imitation of Western works in Turkish music and film culture, can be seen in Histoire(s) du Cinéma.