Germany Film Week in Three Cities

Art and Experience Cinematic Group, in collaboration with German Embassy in Iran, will show six German feature films as well as a documentary for a week in Tehran, Kerman and Shiraz.

According to the website of Art and Experience Cinematic group (Aecinema.ir), Germany Film Week will be inaugurated on Oct. 29 at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran in the presence of Tobias (Toby) Ashraf, German journalist, curator, translator and film critic, and will run through Nov. 4.

Ashraf writes for various publications and moderates film talks such as Berlinale Forum and Berlinale Generation. In 2014, he founded the Berlin Art Film Festival and in 2015 won the Siegfried Kracauer Prize for Best Film Review from the German Association of Film Critics. He has also acted in the 2013 German film ‘Welcome to the Candy House’.

Together with Houshang Golmakani, Iranian journalist, film critic and director, and Majid Barzegar, Iranian film director, producer, screenwriter and photographer,  Ashraf will hold workshops on filmmaking in Germany and joint production during the week in the three cities. ‘Soul Birds’ directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, the only documentary planned for the week, talks about the intimate relationship between human beings and Nature by showing a deeply moving portrait of three children battling leukemia.

The 2014 feature film ‘Phoenix’ by Christian Petzold is one of the feature films scheduled to go on screen at the IAF, Golestan Cineplex in Shiraz and Pars Hall in Kerman.

The story of the drama/ history revolves around a disfigured holocaust survivor who sets out to determine if the man she loved has betrayed her trust.

‘Yella’ is another film by Petzold to be shown during the event. It is about a woman who has separated from her aggressive husband, but the man cannot quite bring himself to forget her. When their fraught interaction finally comes to a dramatic conclusion, Yella’s life takes an odd shift.

‘Hotel Lux’ by Leander Haussmann, ‘The Foster Boy’ by Markus Imboden, and ‘In Between Worlds’ directed by Feo Aladag are other movies planned for the week.

The story of ‘Hotel Lux’ is about Hans Zeisig, Hitler’s personal astrologer, who flees from Berlin in 1938 with a Russian passport and finds shelter in the legendry Hotel Lux of Moscow.

In ‘The Foster Boy’, a 15-year-old orphan is hired out to a farmer’s family, where he is treated like a workhorse. The only thing keeping him alive is his friendship with Berteli, a young woman who shares his dreams of living in Argentina with Max.

‘In Between Worlds’ , Jesper, a German soldier, signs up for a mission in Afghanistan to prevent the rising influence of the Taliban with the help of Tarik, a young and inexperienced interpreter. When Tarik’s life is threatened by the Taliban, Jesper is torn between his military obligations and his conscience; he discovers the immense differences between the two worlds.

Another film selected for the week is ‘Babai’ (meaning father in Albanian) directed by Visar Morina, which narrates the story of a 10-year-old boy and his father, Gezim, from Kosovo who together roam the streets selling cigarettes and barely earning a living. Gezim migrates to Germany in search of a better life and leaves his son behind.

All the screenings at the three cinemas are free for the public.

Art and Experience Cinematic Group, affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, has created a platform (in a limited number of cinemas) to show selected from non-commercial films and demonstrate the brilliance of their creators.

The International Department of the group has already organized the Brazilian and Armenian film weeks in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.