In its fourth annual edition KINO!  the independent New York festival of German films presented 12 feature films including six US premieres, four productions not shown before on the East Coast and two films screened for the first time in New York. The sidebar Next Generation Short Tiger 2016 offered 12 short films from young German filmmakers. The program reflected the wide variety of themes and approaches of the contemporary German cinema.  Among the highlights of the program was the centerpiece feature Destiny (Der Muede Tod), the digitally restored 1921 classic Fritz Lang film, a reflection about the traumas of war. This silent film was accompanied with live music by the D.J. Raphael Marionneau.  The interactive television thriller The Verdict, a courtroom drama, placed the audience watching the drama into the role of the judge. KINO! 2017 was produced in collaboration with Bertelsmann, Deutsches Haus (NYU), the Village Voice, and Fandor. It received support from German federal and state agencies focusing on media and films.  

This festival provided a unique opportunity to review outstanding current German films.  Except for Destiny and The Verdict, all features selected had been shown at festivals and received awards.  KINO! is the only German film fest in New York. In Los Angeles, the Goethe Institute USA has organized the German Currents film fest and German films were also shown in the side bar of some local U.S. film festivals.  Because the interest in German films has grown due to Oscar and major US film festival nominations and awards it is often suggested that more private and public sector funding should be provided to foster greater exposure to German films in the United States, though the US is not among the most important markets for German films. German film production has been expanding and Germany is now the third largest film producer in Europe after Britain and France. In 2016 244 film productions were completed including 83 documentaries.  France, where film is more readily accepted as a cultural product, has three film festivals in the New York metropolitan area and offers well attended film programs throughout the year at the New York French Institute. Germany is lagging behind with its sole KINO! festival, a festival that does not generate much publicity. I doubt that German policy makers would concur with the notion that films can be part of public diplomacy. Showing more German films in New York requires more funding because of the costs of marketing the festival and renting a theater. There is also a need to support a modicum of seminars and the customary receptions.  Equally important is the expansion of local expertise to support execution of the festival.

Yet in spite of the obstacles KINO! Faced in its 2017 edition was successful, offering a program of reflexive films going beyond the predictable flatness of commercial cardboard cinema. There were fascinating character studies, the exploration of the migrant underclass,  explorations of coming of age, the interactive audience experience with a court room drama, and immersion in Fritz Lang’s classic Destiny (Der Muede Tod) a 1920 silent film on essential life and death questions. KINO! is now at home in New York’s Sunshine Cinema which fits the film festival perfectly.

All of A Sudden (Auf Einmal), Asli Oezge, 2016

This mystery drama is a well-executed portrait of Karsten, a young subdued white collar worker from a well to do background who finds after a party late at night an unconscious young woman named Anna in his apartment. . His attempts to get help by rushing to a local medical office but finds it closed and upon returning to his apartment he finds Anna dead. The medical examination reveals that a combination of severe asthma, pain killers and alcohol caused her death, though leaves the question open if immediate assistance would have saved her. A police investigation is opened leading to a judicial hearing.  Though he claims to be innocent the suspicion of his friends, fellow workers, longtime girlfriend Laura and even parents do not fade and he becomes a social outcast. His father and his lawyer try to fix the problem by settling the case with Anna’s parents and his girlfriend moves out. Friends who were at the party openly articulate their doubts about his story and after a press report about his case, he is demoted by his company. The disintegration of his social network is starkly portrayed by the director. But when the case against him is dropped because Anna’s family withdraws the charges, Karsten re-asserts himself. He changes from being victimized by unjustified accusations to an aggressive individual revenging himself. He seeks out Anna’s husband and to tell him that Anna committed suicide but he also gives him Anna’s pantyhose that he had found in the apartment. He has a date with an old girlfriend in his new apartment and after successfully initiating sex and secretly taping her he threatens to share the tape with her boyfriend unless she talks with Laura to facilitate reconciliation. Lastly, Karsten blackmails his supervisor to reinstate him in his old job and to promote him to avoid a lawsuit and bad publicity. At a party given for Karsten by his company announcing the promotion the colleagues and friends who shunned him before welcome him warmly as does Laura. Any sympathy one may have had for Karsten fades when he manipulates friends and colleagues and reveals a ruthless character that was hidden before.  A precarious harmony is established at the end, yet the question of his role in Anna’s death remains unanswered.

Original Bliss,  (Gleissendes Glueck)  Sven Taddicken, 2016   

This fascinating drama depicts the tortuous escape of Helene from a marriage to an abusive and cold husband whose expectations she could not meet. Having lost her faith and attachment to God, life no longer has meaning for her beyond the routine tasks of suburban home making. An encounter with a self-help academic, Eduard, does not result in the spiritual awakening that she had hoped for. He tells her that the conscious mind controls our emotions. Despite her lack of spiritual awakening her interactions with Eduard force her to begin communicating in way she had not been. Eduard’s true character prevents any real emotional involvement. Under the veneer of his academic career Eduard has pathological identity problems. He is a voyeur driven by pornographic cravings, sexual obsessions and self- hatred. His self-loathing seems to be relieved when he abstains from sex for 48 days. After this period of abstention Helen joins in a sexual ritual. Utterly changed, she returns to her husband who rejects her violently. Eventually she shares with Eduard the affection she had been longing for. Taddicken provides a superbly portrayed story of a woman who searches for meaning and an intellectual torn by his engrained pornographic desires. The resolution of the tensions between these contradictory characters and their final resolution is appealing and persuasive.

Wild, (Wild) Nicolette Krebitz, 2016  

Of all the films selected for KINO! Wild is the most striking and challenging because  the feature’s storyline is so unique and innovative.  Ania is an otherwise unremarkable and timid young woman immured in a monotonous predictable life.  In a chance encounter coming from work she comes across a wolf staring at her. She catches the wolf and takes him home. This leads to a close relationship with the animal which fundamentally changes her life because the animal accepts her and a close rapport emerges. She slowly develops into a being with behavior patterns close to that of the wolf with whom she has developed a romantic relationship. In the beginning of the feature she seems stressed, uninvolved and passively withdrawn. In the final scene of the story after she has followed the wolf through a barren landscape she awakes in a field in the morning with an expression of joy in her face. Ania has become an individual who knows what she wants even though her desires and actions do not fit socially accepted behavior patterns. She executes an elaborate plan to catch the wolf, transforms her apartment into a rug and garbage filled lair for the wolf and herself, resigns her job and sets the office on fire, disconnects from the social world, and disappears with the wolf. When her boss tracks her down he offers her work suggesting acceptance of what she has become Ania turns his offer down and the wolf attacks him. From Ania’s first glance of the wolf in a park to her devouring a frog and lapping up water her veneers of civilization have disappeared. Krebitz does not provide an interpretation or hints explaining the transformation. Ania finds a home with the wolf which she had not experienced before.

German film festivals held abroad frequently include a feature dealing with the Third Reich and its aftermath, films which tend to receive awards. In the KINO! 2017 selection two films follow that pattern. Fog in August (Nebel im August)  by Kay Wessel (2016) covers the story of Ernst, a young boy who is committed at the age of 13 to a mental institution due to his being part of the Yenish, a small nomadic  group with its own language , a group deemed unworthy of living by the Nazi ideology. Started in 1939 the German euthanasia program had the goal of killing individuals which were physically or mentally disabled or handicapped, or suffered from mental disorders. In short, individuals who could not work were considered a financial burden to society. Mental institutions throughout the Reich and German occupied areas were instructed by Berlin to kill those unworthy of living. The program was officially disbanded after two years but continued under cover until the end of the war with the cooperation of psychiatrists and medical doctors. Fog in August is a superbly executed docudrama based on the file of Ernst which was found after the war. According to the producer, sets, extras, and even the language used carefully resembles  the environment Ernst survived in the mental institution before he was killed; one of the 5000 children who were murdered by the Nazi program. Wessel offers a carefully drawn portrait of the staff of the mental institution, including the institution’s director, Veithausen, one of the many scientists who adhered to eugenics a medical policy deemed to ensure racial hygiene. It has been estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed through the euthanasia program. Killing methods such as starvation and the use of gas were first applied in the mental institutions before they were adopted in concentration camps. Among medical professionals involved in the program few were prosecuted and those that were received short prison terms. Given its documentary approach this film should be required viewing for those interested in Germany and Nazi crimes because it is the first feature film focusing on this massive violation of human rights by German professionals and their staff. 

Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs (Hannas Schlafende Hunde) by Andreas Gruber (2016) is the second KINO! feature falling into the film group of overcoming the past (in German Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung). In this semi-autobiographical feature taking place in a small Austrian village, a young girl discovers in the late fifties that she is Jewish, unearthing a past her mother tried to repress but her grandmother welcomes. Closely linked in the narrative, is the behavior of former Nazis, from a building superintendent to a school teacher and former soldiers celebrating the past. The film is of passing interest because there is nothing unique about the well intentioned story and its presentation of an Austria firmly rooted anti-Semitism.

As other important film festivals like the Berlinale and New York’s Tribeca film fest the KINO! 2017 program included the 2016 television production Verdict (Terror - Ihr Urteil) a court room thriller by Lars Kraume. A German air force pilot is accused of murder since, contrary to his orders, he shot down a passenger jet with 164 passengers hijacked by terrorists bound for a Munich soccer stadium with 70,000 people. Not having a legal basis for his decision the pilot followed his moral position that saving 70, 000 people justifies killing the passengers and crew of the plane. Filmed entirely in the court room setting Verdict is distinguished by an extraordinary performance of its actors and the involvement of its viewers. This television experiment drew an unusualy large audience of 6.8 million exceeding by a wide margin television shows usually programmed during that time slot. The viewers were requested to participate in a decision about guilt and innocence of the pilot and 87% voted that he was innocent. After the vote the judge summarized the factors justifying the decision. Kraume prepared also a different ending for the guilt version of the trial which would have been shown if the audience had voted that way.

Claus Mueller,  filmexchange@gmail.com