16/08/2007

Germany is flying its flag high this week, with four new domestic releases up against five non-European titles and one French production.

X Verleih is releasing And Along Come Tourists [+see also:
trailer
interview: Alexander Fehling
film profile] (see article) by Robert Thalheim (Netto [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), which screened in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The film questions the concept of memory through the encounter of a young German conscientious objector (Alexander Fehlin, Best Actor at the Munich Film Festival), who is sent to Auschwitz to manage tourist activities, with an elderly camp survivor.

And Along Come Tourists was produced by Britta Knöller and director-producer Hans-Christian Schmid for 23/5 Filmproduktion.

Stardust is releasing Mirage by Simon Groß. The title was voted Best Film at the 25th Munich Film Festival in June.

In this debut feature produced by Enigma Film, the director portrays the strange relationship laced with suspicion that develops between a couple on holiday in the Moroccan desert (Marie Zielcke and Matthias Schweighöfer) and a mysterious stranger (Jean-Hugues Anglade).

Rounding up the German selection is Rolf S. Wolkenstein’s Lauf der Dinge, a drama released by Pictorion, which shows how the sunny holidays of four youths cannot erase all of life’s existential shadows, and Holger Jancke’s documentary Grenze (“Border”), a Salzgeber release on the lives of former East and West Germans who did their military service around the wall dividing their country.

This week’s releases feature another European title, Hunting and Gathering [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Prokino), directed by talented French helmer Claude Berri and starring two actors very popular among foreign audiences, Audrey Tautou and Guillaume Canet.

(Translated from French)