New German Film Festival Announces Event Programme

On October 18, the annual New German Film festival starts in Ukraine. The film screening event, held by Goethe Institut in Ukraine in cooperation with Arthaus Traffic and with the support of ProCredit Bank Ukraine, features seven films, including two joint Ukrainian-German productions.

The festival opens with the Transit melodrama from the leader of the Berlin School, Christian Petzold. The film revolves around a couple who meets in Marseille on the eve of the complete occupation of France by German troops. The leading roles in the film were performed by young stars, Paula Beer (Frantz) and Franz Rogowski (Victoria). The world premiere of the film was held within the official programme of the Berlin Film Festival, where Transit competed for the Golden Bear award.

The programme for this year’s New German Film festival includes two biographical motion pictures. The black-and-white biopic Three Days with Romy Schneider centres around the last interview with the famous actress while in rehab. This Emily Atef film has received seven German Film Awards. The second biographical feature is The Young Karl Marx, which traces the path of Karl Marx from starvation in Paris to becoming one of the most influential figures in world philosophy. This drama stars August Diehl (Inglorious Basterds) and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread).

Robert Schwentke’s black-and-white historical drama, The Captain, received recognition for cinematography at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film’s protagonist is an exhausted and hungry 19-year-old common soldier, who in the last days of World War II steals the captain’s uniform and pretends to be a Wehrmacht officer. In addition, the comedy, Casting, will please film fans with its re-creation of a casting for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic film, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

The special showcase of the 2018 New German Film event will be the screening of Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass, which garnered the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. On October 19 in the Kiev cinema, the director will personally present his satirical drama about the events which unfolded in the eastern part of Ukraine. A co-production between Germany, Ukraine, the Netherlands, France and Romania, the motion picture joined the long list of the European Film Awards and represents Ukraine as a national candidate for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Also created in cooperation with Germany, the Ukrainian tragicomedy Volcano follows an OSCE translator who is sent to the border with Crimea as part of a monitoring mission. The world debut of this new Roman Bondarchuk film was held in the East of the West competition programme in Karlovy Vary. Volcano also won the Grand Prix of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival (Yerevan, Armenia).

There are also VR screenings available for guests of the festival: a virtual reality area in the Kiev cinema will enable viewers to become engrossed in Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis.

Now in its 24th year, New German Film is one of the oldest film screening events in Ukraine, representing the best cinematography in the country. The festival takes place in Kiev (October 18-24), Mariupol (November 1-6), Chernivtsi (November 15-19), Lviv (November 22-26), Dnieper, Odessa and Kharkov (dates pending), all with support from the official partner, ProCredit Bank Ukraine. All films are shown in the original language with Ukrainian subtitles.