In our Monthly Film Series, we will show a variety of GERMAN or GERMAN language films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On the 2nd Wednesday of each month, audiences will now have a chance to see these films on a regular basis at the CLINTON STREET THEATER. (Children movies will be playing on Sunday afternoons – please check our website.) All films are with English subtitles.

24 WEEKS (24 Wochen)

WED. March 13, 2019 – 7:00 PM

Germany, 2016 – 102 min

Directed by: Anne Zohra Berrached
Starring: Julia Jentsch, Bjarne Mädel, Johanna Gastdorf, Emilia Pieske
On the stage and in the spotlight, Astrid lives and loves her job as a stand up comedian, devoting herself completely to her work, while Markus, her husband and manager, calmly and ably supports her. However, when the couple is expecting their second child, their otherwise so regular and well ordered life is thrown off course after a routine exam reveals trisomy 21. At first neither of them knows how to cope, but they eventually decide together in favor of a life with Down’s Syndrome.
Drawing on the same strength that helped them take control of their daily life working with the public, the future parents start preparing for life with a disabled child. They are unfazed when their friends and relatives react with bewilderment and helplessness. Soon the diagnosis is no longer frightening, and they start looking forward again to the birth of their child. But when during the six month of pregnancy, another exam reveals the full extent of the disability, this news hits the parents much harder, and their courage and optimism comes very close to folding like a house of cards.
Here again, Astrid and Markus want to take every decision tog ether, and again they want to find a way to make things work. But the prognosis is now much more complicated. They suddenly find themselves faced with a moral conflict, having to decide between bringing a severely handicapped child into the world and ending the pregnancy in the sixth month. Racing from one diagnosis and one piece of advice to another, their opinions now diverge. Who can know whether the child is really going to suffer, and whether its life will be worth living? While they are searching for the right answer, everything is called into question their relationship, their desire for a child, and a life according to plan. With medical professionals, statistics, and prognoses around her on every side, Astrid realizes that since she is bearing the child, she is ultimately the only one who can make the decision.
Director Anne Zohra Berrached was born in Erfurt, East Germany, in 1982. After she got her degree in
social education, with a focus on psychology in Frankfurt, she worked as a drama teacher in
London for two years. She spent several months in Madrid, Spain and Yaoundé, Cameroon before
she became a director’s assistant at the Hansatheater and Ballhaus Ost in Berlin. In 2009,
she began to study directing at the Film Academy, Baden-Württemberg. Her second year movie
SAINT & WHORE was invited to over 80 film festivals around the globe. In her third year, she
completed her first feature film TWO MOTHERS. It premiered at the 63rd International Film
Festival in Berlin in 2013. The has earned the “First Steps No Fear Award” and the “Dialogues
en Perspective” of the section “Perspective German Cinema” at the Berlin Film Festival. 24 WEEKS was selected for the 66th Berlin International Film Festival.
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