Family discord on summer vacation
With Vacation [+see also:
trailer
film profile], screened at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival to an almost empty auditorium, Thomas Arslan has taken a different path from his previous films. The director has abandoned his Turkish origins and his preference for individual stories to make an ensemble film about a German family on holiday in the country.
In this "unusual" context – in the sense that everyday life is interrupted by summertime – Arslan invites viewers to observe the complex "network" of relationships in a family of four generations and several couples. What interested him about the family was that "as a structure, it determines the formal aspects of the film, all the more so because the characters are together alone in this house and therefore forced to interact," said the director at the press conference.
In Vacation time stands still. Nothing obvious happens. "The action takes place within," says actress Angela Winkler. The characters are faced with decisions and philosophise on happiness, but all this happens in silence – and the characters’ muteness is accented by the absence of music, which is instead substituted by the sounds of nature and rustling. For Winkler, the central image of the film is a table with a chair on either side, symbolising the prevalence of dissensions over harmony at the film’s close.
Also starring Karoline Eichhorn, Uwe Bohm and Anja Schneider, Vacation is a co-production between Pickpocket Filmproduktion and ZDF/3sat.
The title will be released in Germany through Peripher Filmverleih.
(Translated from French)
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