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| Face to Face with German Films actor, producer, co-writer of Eline Gehring’s Nico, Sara Fazilat stated “I love the films of Andrea Arnold, Ken Loach, Susanne Bier and Asghar Farhadi.” |
The seven filmmakers selected for the 7th annual Face to Face with German Films campaign are Jerry Hoffmann (actor in Burhan Qurbani’s Shahada, director of I Am); Sarah Noa Bozenhardt (writer-director; Among Us Women); Matthias Luthardt (writer-director; Pingpong); Zamarin Wahdat [cinematographer and director; visual designer on Carol Dysinger’s Oscar-winning Learning To Skateboard In A Warzone (If You’re A Girl)]; Sara Fazilat (actor, producer, co-writer; Eline Gehring’s Nico); Julia Kovalenko (film editor; Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher), and Anne Zander (actor; Barbara Ott’s For Jojo).
I asked them, as I did with Unifrance’s 10 Talents To Watch in 2022, which film or films they saw in 2021 they particularly enjoyed and why. Joachim Trier’s multiple Oscar-nominated The Worst Person In The World and the Oscar-nominated The Hand Of God, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, and last year’s Oscar winner Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round came up as some of their favourites.
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| Zamarin Wahdat chose Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Below are their responses:
Sara Fazilat: I love the films of Andrea Arnold, Ken Loach, Susanne Bier and Asghar Farhadi. They make it possible to understand and empathise with the characters they are portraying, and even if the viewer has a different background or experiences, you get into the situation where you ask yourself, “how would I act if this were me?” So basically, you identify with people who seem to be far away from you and your surroundings. This is what it takes to shift the minds of people and make a change. Because we start changing the world by changing ourselves. So of course, I am inspired by these brilliant filmmakers. Therefore, I am really happy that my film, Nico, was awarded at the Cambridge Film Festival and will be screened in London in March at a wonderful festival. I’m not allowed to announce the name yet but keep your eyes open in March for Nico!
Julia Kovalenko: Last year I got really sentimental about cinema because the theatres were closed. So, I was really excited when I finally had the opportunity to see Another Round (Druk) by Thomas Vinterberg, whose work I really like. Another Round is a drama-comedy about four teachers who set out to prove a theory which says that people are more creative while having a 0.05% blood alcohol level. So, they teach in a not-quite sober state, which brings them success at first. They gradually overdo it and have trouble coping with everyday life and neglect their families. Besides the great staging and performances of the actors, I really liked the balance between drama and comedy, where the funny passages often have a sad veil. The plot may be based on an absurd theory which is not real, but let's just pretend! That’s really a nice experiment with an interesting outcome. I would like to see more of such films, where characters do not come to a happy ending, but reach a new stage in life they struggle with, just as in real life.
Furthermore, Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life impressed me at the beginning of 2020. Stylistically it was typical Malick. This film, however, moved me deeply. It is a film about war, but no war is shown. The question of “what would I do in Franz Jaegerstaetter's place?” resonates during the whole film. The main character refuses to swear an oath of allegiance to the Third Reich which leads him to prison, where his beliefs and love for his wife keep him alive. This inner fight is a sad, beautiful, atmospheric and remarkable journey. After almost three years of editing, which is quite impressive perseverance, Malick and his crew really did an amazing job by bringing this film to life and have created a beautiful piece of art.
Anne Zander: It's hard to choose one film; I like a range of good movies. I recently watched the South Korean film Silenced on Netflix, which is based on a true story. The film gets under your skin and is very hard to bear. In general, I love to see good stories with an authentic cast.
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| Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve with Anders Danielsen Lie in Joachim Trier’s multiple Oscar-nominated The Worst Person In The World, chosen by Matthias Luthardt |
Zamarin Wahdat: Learning To Skateboard In A Warzone (If You’re A Girl): The Hand Of God by Paolo Sorrentino. The film was told in a fresh and unexpected way that surprised me. At the same time, it had the quality to stay so close to its characters and their authenticity. It is not common to experience the complexities of life within one film in such a rich and unusual way.
The Hand Of God did that to me. I laughed, I felt grief, I wondered, I was bored with the characters, I was surprised and sometimes put on the edge. For me it depicted life in and of itself and I still think about it beyond the screen. For me, The Hand Of God is what I consider cinema and what I strive to explore in my own work.
Sarah Noa Bozenhardt: Two films that particularly impacted me this past year are the documentary Displaced by Sharon Ryba-Kahn and the fiction film Precious Ivie by Sarah Blaßkiewitz. Both films tell intimate family narratives and explore relationship webs of daughters and their fathers set in modern-day Germany.
Displaced explores the everlasting effects of trauma and is a much-needed call for German families to face their own past and role in the Shoah. Precious Ivie is a multi-layered and unapologetic film about sisterhood, the search for your roots and self-discovery. Both films are directed by determined women, whose energy and values radiate onto the screen and continue to keep me captivated months after watching their films.
Matthias Luthardt: I particularly liked the film The Worst Person In The World by Joachim Trier. A romantic drama, quite conventional in its formal choices and topic, but unpretentious, gentle and funny, with wonderful actors and real life-situations that are quite familiar to most of us, I think.
Jerry Hoffmann: Two TV shows I was recently watching and was very inspired by were Succession and The White Lotus. Really great shows with a lot of cringe comedy. Many brilliantly awkward moments and so much fun.
