As the unveiling of the Foreign Language Oscar shortlist approaches, it’s time for my annual look at the films that have a shot at making the cut. For the first time, we are splitting the preview into three parts — and listing the films in no particular order. But as with each year, I don’t envy the committees that have to whittle down a record number of submissions — 83 this time around — of some truly remarkable films. There’s an embarassment of riches out there and many agree there is no slam dunk frontrunner. And even if there were, the Foreign Language phase one committee and the executive committee who are the guardians of the shortlist, are hardly predictable — think: the exclusions of 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days; Wadjda and others in recent years. Some feel changes for selecting the eventual winner that came about last year have benefitted the category.
- 12/17/2014
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline
Dominik Graf has finally properly landed in America, and it's about damn time. The German director, known almost exclusively for a prodigious—and unexportable—output of work for television, has been directing since the 1970s, but only Beloved Sisters, one of this year's Berlinale competitors, has managed to secure proper theatrical distribution in the United States. I don’t know if the time is ripe or, more likely, if this is a mere fluke. Graf’s omnivorous ingestion of German social, political, cultural, and material histories and transformation of their tensions into deeply intelligent, supremely revealing genre dramas ipso facto must eventually create something international distributors think non-Germans might want to see. Then again, previous films by the director seemingly ripe or obvious for English-language audiences, including the Die Hard-like action-siege film Die Katze (1988, which was actually pathetically limitedly shown with an alternate soundtrack in the Us), the zany post-Berlin...
- 9/29/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
The 64th Berlin International Film Festival may have ended, but acquisition season is still in full swing. Music Box Films has obtained the U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to Berlin competition title "Beloved Sisters," the period romance film by Dominik Graf. Florian Stetter stars as the Romantic era poet Friedrich von Schiller. The film follows Schiller's love affair with the aristocratic von Lengefeld sisters, played by Hannah Herzsprung and Henriette Confurius. Graf is best known for the German thrillers "The Invincibles" and "A Map of the Heart," the latter of which was a Berlin competition title in 2002. No release date is set.
- 2/20/2014
- by Max O'Connell
- Indiewire
Below you will find our total coverage of the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam by Daniel Kasman.
Above: Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part.
Trembling Disturbed
On Sergei Loznitsa's Letter, Peter Schreiner's Fata Morgana, Pedro Costa's Sweet Exorcist, and Filipa César's Cacheu
Two as One as Many
On Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Long Farewells (1971), Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part, and David Gatten's By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging.
Of Cinema, Pixels and Chinese Warfare
On Mary Helena Clark's Orpheus (Outtakes), Makino Takashi's 2012, and Johnnie To's Drug War
Graf Attack!: or The Possibility Space (The Cinema of Dominik Graf)
On Dominik Graf, including Die Katze (1988), Spieler (1990), Der Fahnder: Nachtwache (1990/1993], Die Sieger (1994), Denk ich an Deutschland - Das Wispern im Berg der Dinge (1997), München - Geheimnisse einer Stadt (2002), Der Felsen (2002), Die Freunde der Freunde (2002), Hotte im Paradies...
Above: Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part.
Trembling Disturbed
On Sergei Loznitsa's Letter, Peter Schreiner's Fata Morgana, Pedro Costa's Sweet Exorcist, and Filipa César's Cacheu
Two as One as Many
On Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Long Farewells (1971), Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part, and David Gatten's By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging.
Of Cinema, Pixels and Chinese Warfare
On Mary Helena Clark's Orpheus (Outtakes), Makino Takashi's 2012, and Johnnie To's Drug War
Graf Attack!: or The Possibility Space (The Cinema of Dominik Graf)
On Dominik Graf, including Die Katze (1988), Spieler (1990), Der Fahnder: Nachtwache (1990/1993], Die Sieger (1994), Denk ich an Deutschland - Das Wispern im Berg der Dinge (1997), München - Geheimnisse einer Stadt (2002), Der Felsen (2002), Die Freunde der Freunde (2002), Hotte im Paradies...
- 2/7/2013
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Rotterdam this year has offered one certifiable giant discovery in international cinema: German filmmaker Dominik Graf, revealed in a simultaneously introductory and interventionist retrospective programmed by Christoph Huber and Olaf Möller. An incredibly prolific filmmaker beginning in the late 1970s, Graf has interwoven his cinema into the fabric of the German television industry, producing a body of work ranging from television episodes, made-for-tv films, essay movies, documentaries, and a handful of films intended for the cinema.
Yet despite Graf's prodigious output of nearly sixty works, its primarily creation for national television has meant that it has been essentially unavailable to English-speaking audiences prior to Rotterdam's 17 film retrospective. The first film of his I saw was Komm mir nicht nach (Don't Follow Me Around) in the middle of the Dreileben trilogy in 2010, notably another for-television project, but one which had festival and theatrical ambitions beyond German living rooms, perhaps due...
Yet despite Graf's prodigious output of nearly sixty works, its primarily creation for national television has meant that it has been essentially unavailable to English-speaking audiences prior to Rotterdam's 17 film retrospective. The first film of his I saw was Komm mir nicht nach (Don't Follow Me Around) in the middle of the Dreileben trilogy in 2010, notably another for-television project, but one which had festival and theatrical ambitions beyond German living rooms, perhaps due...
- 2/6/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
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