Films from all four corners of Europe

26/11/2010

This week’s new releases span the whole of Europe.

Firstly, Farbfilm is launching Juraj Herz’s Austrian/German/Czech co-production Habermann [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which looks back at the burning issue of the expulsion of the Sudetens by the Germans during the Second World War and is based on real events. The character of the film’s title, played by Mark Waschke, is a Sudeten industrialist married to a Czech woman of Jewish descent (Hannah Herzsprung). Despite himself, he is caught in a chaos of political and ideological villainy.

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The film’s German co-producers are Apollo Media and Art-Oko.

Meanwhile, Warner is hoping for success with the release of an attention-grabbing European title: David Pinillos’s Spanish/German/Swiss co-production Bon Appétit [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in which a German wine waitress (Nora Tschirner) and a new Basque chef (Unax Ugalde) fall in love in a top restaurant.

Another German co-production is playing the romance card: Arvin Chen’s comedy Au Revoir, Taipei. A young man whose girlfriend has gone away to Paris is prepared to do anything to join her there, at the risk of getting lost on the way. This title is distributed by Arsenal.

Kinostar is releasing German film Suicide Club (produced by Tagträumefilm), the debut feature by Olaf Saumer. Its five characters meet by chance at the top of a building from which they were each intending to jump off. They spend a day together on this roof, on the edge of the abyss.

Audiences will also get the chance to discover the documentary 7 Oder Warum Ich Auf der Welt Bin by Antje Starost (also producer and distributor) and Hans Helmut Grotjahn. The directors ask seven children to say why they were born into the world.

Alamode is launching Icelandic director Dagur Kári’s new film The Good Heart [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. This English-language Danish/US/Icelandic co-production centres on a New York bar owner in poor health who takes a young homeless man under his wing.

The line-up of new European releases is rounded off by Benoît Jacquot’s French film Villa Amalia [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Hughes Anglade and Xavier Beauvois (distributed by Peripher); and Gitta Gsell’s Swiss documentary Bödälä – Dance the Rhythm (RealFiction).