30/01/2009

Thirteen new releases, including eight impressive European titles of various genres, hit German theatres yesterday.

Firstly, teenage viewers will be able to catch up with their favourite gang of schoolgirls in Vivian Naefe’s The Wild Chicks and Life. In this third instalment in the series of adaptations of Cornelia Funke’s novels, the young heroines experience their first romantic problems.

The film was co-written by the director, Thomas Schmid and renowned producer Uschi Reich, who also produced the film for Bavaria, in co-production with Constantin. The latter are handling distribution.

Meanwhile, Salzgeber have released another, darker teenage film: Thomas Stuber’s debut feature Teenage Angst [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which screened at last year’s Berlinale.

Produced by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the film centres on a group of pupils at an elitist boarding school. In order to escape from their gilded cage, they revel in increasingly dangerous excesses, from overindulgence in alcohol to the torture of one of their peers.

Also hitting screens is Heart of Fire [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Luigi Falorni (The Story of the Weeping Camel). This Austrian/German co-production (produced by TV60Film Produktion, Senator Film Produktion and Aichholzer Film) was presented in competition at the 2008 Berlinale.

Launched by Senator, the film traces the journey from innocence to experience of a young child soldier in the Eritrean liberation troops (see news).

The line-up includes four documentaries: Katrin Seybold’s Die Widerständigen, about the White Rose resistance movement (distributed by Basis); Mohammad Farokhmanesh’s German/Iranian co-production Reich des Bösen - Fünf Leben im Iran (“The Empire of Evil: Five Lives in Iran”, distributed by Mîtosfilm); UK title In the Shadow of the Moon by David Sington and Christopher Riley (polyband); and Irish documentary Seaview, by Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley, which looks at a refugee camp in North Dublin (Freunde d. dt. Kinemathek).

Finally, German audiences will have the chance to discover Antonello Grimaldi’s highly acclaimed Italian film Quiet Chaos [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonello Grimaldi
interview: Domenico Procacci
film profile], starring Nanni Moretti (distributed by Kool).

(Translated from French)