RELEASES Germany
A tourist trap and East German skaters
15/08/2012 - After a quiet first half of August in German cinemas, Constantin is hoping to draw back crowds with the comedy Wer's glaubt wird selig [trailer] by the extremely prolific Markus H. Rosenmüller. Since the unexpected success of Grave Decisions [trailer] (2006), a modest auteur film that became cult, Rosenmüller has made on average two films a year without ever sacrificing their quality in doing so. (He notably made the bandit tale Räuber Kneißl in 2008 and the marvellous Little White Lies in 2009).
Wer's glaubt wird selig is written by the director with Jeremy Leven and produced by Munich-based outfit Wiedemann & Berg. In the film, a restaurateur named Georg (played by Christian Ulmen, who has appeared in the popular Jerry Cotton and Männerherzen) and his wife Émilie (Marie Leuenberger) devise a strategy to bring back tourists to the small ski resort where they live, after it has been deserted for lack of snow. When Émilie’s mother, the devout and nervous Daisy (Hannelore Elsner) unexpectedly drops dead, Georg has the idea to have her canonised, to bring tourists and credulous catholics back to his restaurant and surrounding souvenir shops. All he has to do is to convince a minister sent by the Pope of the departed Daisy’s saintliness.
Farbfilm is also releasing This Ain't California, a surprising documentary by Marten Persiel that was screened at the last Berlin Film Festival. This Wildfremd production uses Super 8 footage taped over several years by a group of young East German skaters to show the German Democratic Republic as we have never seen it before.
Prokino is releasing 360, an English-French-Australian-Brazilian thriller directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Peter Morgan (The Queen [trailer, film focus]) to star, among others, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Moritz Bleibtreu, and Jamel Debbouze.
The last European novelty of the week is another film that was screened in Berlin (and won the FIPRESCI Prize in its Panorama section), Héléna Klotz’s atmospheric Atomic Age [trailer, film focus] (that also won the Grand Prix at the Premiers Plans Angers Film Festival and the 2012 Jean Vigo Prize). This French film is distributed by Pro-Fun.
(Translated from French)
