I PHONE YOU Love during the time of the World Wide Web. Distant yet close. Close yet distant.
Ling, mid-20s, lives in Chongqing. There she meets Yu, a Chinese business traveller who lives in Berlin. He gives her an iPhone as a goodbye present. They start a romantic telephone relationship. When Ling flies to Berlin to see Yu, another man, Marco, awaits her at the airport. He is Yu's German bodyguard. He is to make sure that Ling flies back home.
Over two days Ling meets Turks, Poles and Berliners, waiters, policemen and whores, even a dog joins her. For the bodyguard she causes more pain than pleasure, and still he grows to like her. In the end Ling finds Yu and leaves him at the same time, in a way that is surprising to both of them.
CAST:
Jiang Yiyan (Ling)
Florian Lukas (Marco)
Wu Da Wei ( Yu)
Wang Hai Zhen (Yu's wife)
THE ARCHITECT Best Supporting Actress (Sophie Rois) - German Film Award 2009
The successful Hamburg architect Georg Winter (Josef Bierbichler), his wife (Hilde Van Mieghem) and two grown-up children (Sandra Hüller and Matthias Schweighöfer) travel to attend Georg's mother's funeral in a snowy mountain village where he grew up as a child. At the funeral the mysterious Hannah (Sophie Rois) and her son Alex (Lucas Zolgar) suddenly appear. She unearths a truth which drags the family into a vortex of desires and confusion. When a snow avalanche cuts the village off from the outside world, there's no escape...
CAST:
Josef Bierbichler (Georg Winter)
Eva Winter (Hilde Van Mieghem)
Sandra Hüller (Reh)
Matthias Schweighöfer (Jan)
POOL OF PRINCESSES BERLINALE 2007: Winner of the Award "Dialogue en perspective"
Pool of Princesses is the documentary about three teenagers in Berlin. Klara, Mina, and Tanutscha know each other since kindergarten. They have been growing up in the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg, a multicultural district in Berlin. The three have a lot in common. They are fifteen, best friends, and spend their leisure time together. Hanging around in parks with friends, spending time in Kreuzberg's public swimming pool Prinzenbad, enjoying life in the big diverse city Berlin.
CREDITS:
Script and Dircector Bettina Blümner
DOP Mathias Schöningh
Editing Inge Schneider
ProProduced by Peter Schwartzkopff u. Katja Siegel
THE HOUSE IS BURNING 24 hours: One day. One night. One Fight.
One day. One night. A group of teenagers struggles to find their way in a world that offers them few choices. Abused, abandoned or let down by the adults in their lives, uncertain in their personal relationships, angry at a hypocritical corporate world and dismissive of religion that promises a better life in the next world, they try to make their own way. In 24 hours, Mike will leave for the army, following in his father's footsteps. His last day around family and friends turns into a war of emotions. His girlfriend Valerie, angry at him for leaving, rejects him. As he grapples with her decision, his friends are making their own bids for a better life.
CAST:
Joe Petrilla (Mike)
Nicole Vicius (Valerie)
Robin Taylor (Phil)
Julianne Michelle (Terry)
Harley Adams (Steve)
DON'T COME KNOCKING A farce, a family story, a road movie
Howard Spence has seen better days. When he was younger he was a movie star, mostly in Westerns. At the age of sixty, Howard uses drugs, alcohol and young girls to avoid the painful truth that there are only supporting roles left for him to play. After yet another night of debauchery in his trailer, Howard awakens in disgust to find that he is still alive, but that nobody in the world would have missed him if he had died. That morning Howard is absent from the film set. Instead, we see him galloping away on his movie horse in his costume – full cowboy regalia. But there is no camera filming him this time. Howard is fleeing, from the film and his life.
CAST:
Sam Shepard (Howard)
Jessica Lange (Doreen)
Tim Roth (Sutter)
Gabriel Mann (Earl)
Sarah Polley (Sky)
After years of living abroad with her American missionary father, Lana (Michelle Williams) returns to the United States to begin her studies. But instead of focusing on her education, Lana sets out to find her only other living relative - her uncle Paul, her deceased mother's brother. A Vietnam veteran, Paul is a reclusive vagabond with deep emotional war wounds.
A tragic event witnessed by the two unites them in a common goal to rectify a wrong, and takes them on a journey of healing, discovery, and kinship.
CAST:
John Diehl (Paul)
Michelle Williams (Lana)
Richard Edson (Jimmy)
Wendell Pierce (Henry)
License requests film stills, screening and the use of extract(s)
