27/02/2007

The Lives of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile], the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, will be released theatrically in Italy on April 5 by 01 Distribution.

The feature debut by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (see Focus), on the control exercised and climate of fear created by the Stasi in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, was made on a budget of only €1.5m and was a huge box office success in Germany (nearly €9.5m since August 13, 2006) and around the world (over €16.5m since February 18, 2007), also due to the wonderful performances by lead actors Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch and Ulrich Tukur.

Upon receiving the award on the stage of Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, the 33 year-old director-screenwriter, who had previously only made several shorts and television projects, said he hoped the film offers a contrast to the current trend in Germany towards nostalgia and the glorification of the country’s Communist era and thanked Arnold Schwarzenegger "For teaching me that the words `I can't' should be stricken from my vocabulary".

The Lives of Others is only the third German film to win an Oscar – after Nowhere in Africa [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Caroline Link in 2002 and Volker Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum in 1979 – and marks the newest hit of the EU’s Media Programme, which gave €500,000 towards the film’s theatrical and DVD distribution budget outside of Germany.

(Translated from Italian)