08/12/2015 - The actress and director's new film has been selected in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, spearheading the German representation at the festival

Germany has become a regular at North America's most famous independent film festival. After Bastian Günther with Houston [+see also:
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film profile] (in 2013) and David F Wnendt with Wetlands [+see also:
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interview: David Wnendt
film profile] (in 2014), the Sundance Film Festival has invited actress and director Nicolette Krebitz to compete in the World Cinema Dramatic section with her third feature, Wild [+see also:
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film profile]. 

After Jeans and Nina Hoss starrer The Heart is a Dark Forest [+see also:
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film profile], this Heimatfilm production shows, again, how powerful, sensuous, fascinating and disturbing Krebitz can be in the way she approaches her female characters, here a young woman (Lilith Stangenberg) who gradually sets herself free by stepping into the "wilderness". Indeed, after coming across a wolf on her way to work, she revokes our tacit agreements with civilisation and fearlessly opts for a life without a safety net. The Sundance screening of Wild will be the film's world premiere. 

The 32nd edition of the festival (21-31 January) is welcoming other German co-productions. Besides Wild, the main competition also includes Assad Fouladkar's Halal Love (and Sex) [+see also:
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film profile] (co-produced by Razor Film with Lebanese partners), which intertwines four tragicomic stories about devoted Muslim women and men trying to cope with their love lives without breaking any religious rules.  

Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami's Sonita [+see also:
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film profile], co-produced in Germany by Tag/Traum, will have its North American premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, following its successful run at the IDFA, where it won the Audience Award. Two more German co-productions are in this section: Pieter-Jan de Pue's The Land of the Enlightened (co-produced by gebrueder beetz filmproduktion) and Shimon Dotan's The Settlers [+see also:
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film profile] (co-produced by Arte, NDR, HR and BR). 

Germany is represented in the US Dramatic Competition by Chad Hartigan's Morris From America [+see also:
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film profile], shot in Germany and co-produced by local outfits Lichtblick Media and INDI Film. The hero of the film is a plump African-American 13-year-old with dreams of becoming a rapper who moves to the German city of Heidelberg, and meets a girl...

Lastly, among the documentaries selected in the Premieres section of the festival, Thorsten Schütte’s Eat That Question - Frank Zappa in His Own Words [+see also:
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film profile] (a co-production between Germany, through TeamWorx Television & Film, and France) is an entertaining encounter with the avant-garde musician, who passed away in 1993.