Reminiscent of Mads Mikkelsen in Another Round, Frederick Lau delivers an outstanding performance in ONE FOR THE ROAD, a deep dive story into the drinking culture set between Berlin’s famous bars and sober therapy rooms. After losing his driver’s licence while innocuously shifting his car while under the influence, Mark is forced to go to a re-education program. And so ensues the trials and tribulations and temptations for a tipple that conspire to trip and topple him from his trajectory to sobriety, or at least the responsible use of alcohol. An amusing yet sobering tragicomedy from director Markus Goller, ONE FOR THE ROAD dips into the highs and lows of drinking and the meaning of true friendship as opposed to shallow drinking buddies.
Another superb performance is on offer from Franz Rogowski in the epic 3 hour long historical drama LUBO, which focuses on a Swiss street performer who seeks justice upon losing his family due to a national campaign to re-educate Yenish children in Switzerland on the cusp of WWII.
The Yenish are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centred on the Rhineland. They were considered inferior but good enough for cannon fodder when conscription came into force to secure borders in the jostling that occurred in the warm up to WWII.
LUBO is another film that bears witness to the cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing that was prevalent in even the most educated and civilised societies, and a reminder that such uncivilised practice prevails even today.
The Festival is also celebrating one of Germany’s most loved and acclaimed auteurs in the sidebar Burden of Dreams: Films of Werner Herzog. The program includes the 2022 documentary WERNER HERZOG: RADICAL DREAMER from filmmaker Thomas von Steinaecker, which features clips of Herzog’s works and interviews with collaborators and admirers including Chloe Zhao, Wim Wenders, Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson.
Selected features include his early work, the 1972 existential odyssey AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) which follows a doomed 16th Century Spanish expedition searching for El Dorado in the Amazon, led by the power-hungry Don Lope de Aguirre (played by Klaus Kinski); FITZCARRALDO, also starring Kinski, about an audacious quest to haul a steamship over a Peruvian mountain; the enigmatic and experimental HEART OF GLASS (Herz aus Glas); his gothic horror adaptation of NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht) with Klaus Kinski in the role of Dracula; and celebrating the 50th anniversary of its release, THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle) the remarkable story based on real events, of a young man raised in isolation.
The Goethe-Institut is presenting the ever-popular sidebar “Kino for Kids”
The 2024 HSBC German Film Festival will take place from 7 May – 5 June
Sydney: 8 May – 29 May, Palace Norton Street, Chauvel Cinema, Palace Central, Palace Moore Park.
For more information, please visit www.germanfilmfestival.com.au
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