A YEAR AGO IN WINTER

Welcome to the 11th Festival of German Films!

German Films returns to the Curzon Soho with an eclectic mix of films, bringing to the screen stories from Germany and further afield, by both established directors and bright new talents. This year we are highlighting four international co-productions as part of our programme, presenting filmmakers and producers who are working in the international arena to great acclaim.

We are delighted to be opening the festival with a Special Preview of A Year Ago In Winter, the latest feature by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Caroline Link. The film is an insightful and deeply affecting family drama starring Karoline Herfurth, Corinna Harfouch and Josef Bierbichler.

The wide-ranging selection of features in this year’s festival includes maverick director Veit Helmer’s inventive, allegorical comedy Absurdistan, which combines imaginative story-telling with outlandish, home spun contraptions; Brigitte Bertele’s debut film A Hero’s Welcome, in which a young soldier who has just returned from Afghanistan tries to come to terms with his experiences and how to cope with daily life; newcomer actress Katharina Derr’s powerful performance as Bica in Beautiful Bitch about street children living a life of organized crime as pickpockets under the toughest of conditions. Partly set against the beautiful backdrop of Mount Fuji, acclaimed director Doris Doerrie’s Cherry Blossoms is a sensitive story about relationships between parents and their children, and the missed opportunities of sharing lives. Oezguer Yildirim’s Chiko, a forceful Turkish- German variation on Scarface set in Hamburg’s rough Dulsberg district, is a dark tale about loyalty, friendship, rage, revenge, drugs and alienation. North Face, directed by Philipp Stoelzl, is the account of a dramatic struggle for survival which unfolds on the North Face of the Eiger in the summer of 1936; and Emily Atef returns to the festival with her second feature The Stranger in Me, an intelligent and powerful film about one of the remaining social taboos: a mother’s rejection of her newborn baby. This year the festival will close with Andreas Dresen’s
Cloud 9, a wonderful film about falling in love at an age when you think lust and passion are merely things of the past.

Under the banner of German Dox we are screening Alexandra Westmeier’s Alone In Four Walls, a heartwrenching film about a lost generation of Russian youth, which looks behind the scenes in a home for juvenile delinquents in Russia; Sebastian Heidinger’s Drifter, a sober look at the vicious circle of prostitution and drug abuse amongst young people in Berlin; Rosa von Praunheim’s very personal Two Mothers - The Search began in Riga; and the ironic Lenin Only Got As Far As Luedenscheid, which looks at the ‘68’ movement in an entertaining and affectionate light.

Focus on International Co-productions highlights four films: Marie Noëlle and Peter Sehr’s The Anarchist’s Wife, the story of undying love set against the backdrop of the harrowing years between Franco’s putsch and the end of World War II; the documentary Echoes of Home directed by Stefan Schwietert, about the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists; Uberto Pasolini’s moving and funny Machan, about the extreme measures people will take to better their lives in a true story about a self-styled ‘Sri Lankan National Handball Team’ which disappeared while playing a tournament in Germany; and Marco Kreuzpaintner’s Trade – Welcome To America, portraying the disastrous consequences of modern sex slavery in a courageous film starring Kevin Kline, whose character rebels against ignorance and indifference in the face of the global trafficking of human beings.

Goethe-Institut London presents Focus on Andres Veiel, screening work by one of Germany's most important documentary filmmakers, including Black Box Germany and Addicted to Acting.

And last but not least there is our annual showcase of Germany’s new talent short filmmaking entitled Next Generation.

We hope you enjoy the festival and that you will join us to meet our visiting filmmakers, producers and actors at the screenings at the Curzon Soho.