03/08/2011

The 64th Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13) is welcoming quite a few German titles, including three coproductions in competition: French director Mia Hansen-Love's Goodbye First Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mia Hansen-Love
film profile] (coprod. Razor Filmproduktion), Tawfik Abu Wael's Last Days in Jerusalem (coproduced by Neue Pegasos), and Julia Loktev's US/German movie The Loneliest Planet (coprod. Flying Moon).

Out of Competition, Locarno is presenting Dreileben, which consists of three feature-length extrapolations – Don't Follow Me Around, Beats Being Dead, and One Minute of Darkness [+see also:
film review
film profile] – conceived respectively by Dominik Graf, Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhäusler around the same true story, that of an escaped convict. Heidi Specogna's Swiss/German title Carte blanche is also screening out of competition.

The Piazza Grande programme includes Achim von Borries' 4 Days in May [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (X Filme Creative Pool) and several coproductions: Swizerland's Tim Fehlbaum's Hell, Norway's Morten Tyldum's Headhunters, Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aki Kaurismäki
film profile], France's Stéphane Robelin's And If We All Lived Together [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Patricia Mazuy's Sport de filles [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Josiane Balasko and Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, to whom the festival is dedicating a tribute consisting of Oliver's Hirschbiegel's Downfall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bernd Eichinger
interview: Joachim Fest
interview: Oliver Hirschbiegel
film profile], The Marquise of O by the late French maestro Éric Rohmer, and Reinhard Hauff's Knife in the Head.

Films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Daniel Schmid are screening in the Special Programme, while Peter Baranowski is vying for a Leopard of Tomorrow with Rauschgift.

Amongst the other German productions selected this year at Locarno, Christian Stahl's Gangsterläufer and Matthias Bittner's Not In My Backyard are part of the Critics' Week.

Germany is also represented within the international jury by the actress Sandra Hüller, while Christoph Hochhäusler is presiding the Cinéastes du Présent jury.