FRI. OCT. 4, 2019 @ 07:30 PM - BUY TICKETS HERE
TRAUMFABRIK – Opening Night – International Premiere
Opening night of the 10th anniversary Portland German Film Festival!
Germany, 2019 - 120 min
Director: Martin Schreier
Cast: Dennis Mojen, Emilia Schüle, Heiner Lauterbach, Ken Duken, Nikolai Kinski, Michael Gwisdek
Summer 1961: Emil is working as an extra at the DEFA studios in Babelsberg, East Germany when he falls head over heels in love with a French dancer named MILOU. The two young lovebirds are obviously meant for each other, but the building of the Berlin Wall soon tears them apart. It looks like they will never see each other again, that is, until Emil has a crazy idea: He’s going to produce a movie and bring Milou back to Babelsberg!
SAT. OCT. 5, 2019 @ 01:00 PM - BUY TICKETS HERE!
It Could Have Been Worse – Mario Adorf (Es hätte schlimmer kommen können - Mario Adorf)
Germany 2019, 98 min.
Director: Dominik Wessely
Cast: Mario Adorf, Senta Berger, Margarethe von Trotta
He almost failed the audition for drama school in Munich, but one teacher recognised his talent: ‘He possesses two things: strength and naivety. Let’s give it a try!’ And so began the career of Mario Adorf, born in 1930, who became one of the most popular actors of his generation. This film charts the important stages in his life: his childhood in the small town of Mayen in the Eifel mountains where he grew up with his single mother; his first theatre experiences in Munich; and his first successful film role, in Robert Siodmak’s Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (The Devil Strikes At Night). The cities of Rome and Paris were constants in this European film star’s biography. He collaborated with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Helmut Dietl, but kept his distance from both the international jet set and Munich’s glitterati. Adorf was often cast as the villain. At an advanced age in 2018, he played Karl Marx in the TV docudrama Der deutsche Prophet. He is currently preparing for a farewell tour entitled ‘Zugabe’ (‘Encore’) which will include songs and poems.
A film about a passionate man and actor who shares his view of the world, his profession, love and growing old in a congenial and self-ironic way.
Festivals: "World Premiere" Berlinale - Berlinale Special Gala (2019)
SAT. OCT. 05, 2019 @ 3.00 PM
ALFONS JITTERBIT – COUNTDOWN TO CHAOS (ALFONS ZITTERBACKE – DAS CHAOS IST ZURÜCK)
Germany 2019, 103 min.
Directed by: Mark Schlichter
Cast: Tilman Döbler, Alexandra Maria Lara, Devid Striesow
What would Alfons Zitterbacke give to be a great athlete, a super student and an astronaut, just like Alexander Gerst. But that isn’t what his world looks like. The 11-year-old stumbles from one mishap to the next. Everyone seems to gang up on him.
SAT. OCT. 5, 2019 @ 07.00 PM - BUY TICKETS HERE
Germany, 2018 - 125 min - OR PREMIERE
Director: Michael “Bully” Herbig
Cast: Friedrich Mücke, Karoline Schuch, David Kross, Thomas Kretschmann, Alicia von Rittberg
Known for Germany’s all-time biggest grossing movies Manitou’s Shoe (2001) and Dreamship Surprise (2004), comedy personality Michael “Bully” Herbig now makes his directing foray into thrillers, recreating a gripping historical event.
1979, East Germany at the height of the Cold War. Günter Wetzel (David Kross, The Reader), a bricklayer, and his friend Peter Strelzyk (Friedrich Mücke), an electrician, can no longer bear the oppressive regime. The two men and their wives resolve to undertake a mission to secretly build a hot air balloon from scratch that will carry them and their families over the border fence to freedom. Over the course of the next 18 months they sew 1,000 square metres of cloth and gather countless weather reports from West German radio with the Stasi (State Police) hot on their heels. A nerve-racking battle against the clock begins…
This movie is proudly sponsored by the Consulate General of Germany in San Francisco
SAT. OCT. 5, 2019 - 09.30 PM - BUY TICKETS HERE
DIRECTOR LUTZ DAMMBECK WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE - Q&A after the film with an introduction by W. Seth Howes, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, German Department of German And Russian Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia
Germany 2018, 105 min
Director: Lutz Dammbeck
Cast: Lutz Dammbeck, Masao Adachi
Legendary author and filmmaker Masao Adachi was a member of the Japanese New Left who shifted roles from political filmmaker to guerilla fighter. After the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, he and his friend and fellow filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu drove from France to Lebanon, where they worked on a documentary about the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, RED ARMY / PFLP: DECLARATION OF WORLD WAR. Three years later, Adachi joined the Japanese Red Army, founded by Fusako Shigenobu, in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Adachi went underground with a new identity and a fake passport and, for the next 23 years, lived at the center of an international network of radical, leftwing revolutionary groups. In 1997, he was arrested and tried for passport violation. Sentenced to four years in a Lebanese prison, he was released after 18 months. He was then deported to Japan, where he was arrested on other passport violations. After another 18 months, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to time served. Following his release, he resumed working on films after a 30-year hiatus.
SUNDAY, OCT. 6, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - BUY TICKETS HERE
BRECHT
Germany / Austria 2018,color, 187 min
Director: Heinrich Breloer
Cast:
Burghart Klaußner, Tom Schilling, Adele Neuhauser, Lou Strenger, Mala Emde, Karolina Horster, Trine Dyrholm, Franz Hartwig, Ernst Stötzner, Friederike Becht, Leonie Benesch, Maria Dragus, Laura de Boer
Bertolt Brecht, a theatre revolutionary, poet of the state, outsider, looks back on his life in 1956, the year of his death, in East Berlin: from provocations in the Augsburg of the First World War, to the early poetic and amorous height flights in Munich and Berlin in the 1920s, his escape from Hitler and US exile, followed by his later years caught in a dilemma between timeless classic and a failing GDR class fighter, an inflexible free man and a compromised Artist.
SUN. OCT. 06, 2019 @ 3.00 PM
ROCCA CHANGES THE WORLD (ROCCA – VERÄNDERT DIE WELT)
Germany 2019, 100 min.
Directed by: Katja Benrath
Cast: Luna Maxeiner, Barbara Sukowa, Fahri Yardim, Mina Tander, Volker Bruch, Detlev Buck, Cordula Stratmann
With never-ending optimism Rocca proves together with her friends, that even a child has the power to change the world.
MONDAY, OCT. 7, 2019 @ 07:00 PM - Buy Tickets Here!
THE TOBACCONIST (Der Trafikant) – OR PREMIERE
Germany/ Austria 2018, 108 min.
Director: Nikolaus Leytner
Cast: Bruno Ganz, Simon Morzé, Johannes Krisch
Starring Bruno Ganz (Downfall, Wings of Desire) as Sigmund Freud
Based on the international bestseller by Robert Seethaler
A tender, heart-breaking story about one young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna.
Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz. As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?
TUESDAY, OCT. 8, 2019 @ 07:00 PM – OR PREMIERE - BUY TICKET HERE!
The Reformer. Zwingli: A Life's Portrait (Zwingli)
Switzerland 2019,
Director: Stefan Haupt
Cast: Maximilian Simonischek, Sarah Sophia Meyer, Anatole Taubman
Zurich, 1519. Arriving with nothing but his impassioned eloquence and radical ideas (e.g. clerics should be free to marry who they choose—radical even today), a young priest sparks a revolution that would challenge the Catholic stronghold over the people, reforming a faith, a nation, and the world. Based on the extraordinary life of Ulrich Zwingli, this lush historical epic reveals how one man’s powerful words and deeds took aim against the tyranny of the time and its suffocating religious strictures. Amid charges of blasphemy and heresy, Zwingli’s denunciation of Biblical hypocrisy slowly begins to sway others to his side, including Anna, a devout widow with a passion for learning. As Zwingli’s controversial positions advance the city toward civil war, his deep bond with Anna is at stake. Multiple award-winning director Stefan Haupt (The Circle) and lead actor Maximilian Simonischek (The Divine Order) craft an intensely vibrant reconstruction of a pivotal moment in Swiss history and an incendiary romance set amid a period of intense transition.
This movie is proudly sponsored by the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco
