Warum? in post-production

by Bénédicte Prot

04/07/2018 - The period movie by Bernd Böhlich stars Alexandra Maria Lara as an enthusiastic communist who goes to the USSR in the 1930s and ends up in the Gulag

Robert Stadlober and Alexandra Maria Lara in Warum? (© Arnim Thomass)

Shot in a little under a month and a half back in February-March, in Berlin, Eisenhüttenstadt and Magdeburg, Warum? by Bernd Böhlich, whose intense career as a TV director was briefly put on hold during the last decade so he could make a couple of features for the big screen (including Du bist nicht allein [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2007, starring Katharina Thalbach and Axel Prahl), is currently in post-production.

The central character, played by another great German actress, Alexandra Maria Lara (whose credits include The Baader Meinhof Complex [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Reader [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and the French movie Small World [+see also:
trailer
film profile], where she played a lead character opposite Gérard Depardieu; she will next be hitting German screens in November, in Markus Goller's 25km/h [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), is a young, enthusiastic communist who goes to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, is accused of spying and is sent to a labour camp. After being released from the Gulag in 1952, she goes back home to what has become the GDR with her sick daughter Lydia. After Stalin's death, when she is finally allowed to talk about what she experienced in the USSR, her newly regained freedom is taken away from her once again as her lover, a hospital doctor and committed communist, informs on her.

The film's cast also includes Carlotta von Falkenhayn, Robert Stadlober, Karoline Eichhorn, Barbara Schnitzler, Stefan Kurt and Jürgen Tarrach. Warum? is being produced by Berlin-based outfit Mafilm Martens Film- und Fernsehproduktion, in co-production with RBB, Cine Plus Filmproduktion and STL, with the support of the German Film Fund - DFFF as well as the regional funds MDM and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Its German release date is yet to be announced, but the distribution will be entrusted to Neue Visionen Filmverleih. The international sales are handled by Pluto Film Distribution Network.