Deutschland 09

Subheaded Thirteen Short Films About The State Of The Nation, this omnibus collection has 13 of the country’s leading directors attempting to take the pulse of Germany 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As might be expected, it’s a mixed bag in terms of quality, tone, genre and even budget, with contributions varying in scale from Wolfgang Becker’s elaborately staged allegory of the country as a dying hospital patient to Isabelle Stever’s no-frills portrayal of a primary school classroom discussion. Overall the production values are high and the mix varied enough to hold an informed audience’s interest, but Germany ‘09 is not the film that will revolutionise the portmanteau format - or make a commercial case for it.

In Germany and its German-speaking neighbour states, the controversy and media discussion provoked by the film (two of of whose segments point an accusatory finger at government ministers) will help it to score a few engagements in cities with politically engaged audiences, but the majority of viewers are likely to see this on quality cable channels like that of co-producer Arte. Outside the country the film’s theme, and domestic directorial line-up, makes it a definite minority-interest title compared to global team outings like the Twin-Towers-themed 11’ 09”01.

Some of the thirteen directors use the ‘state of the nation’ remit as an opportunity for satire. The most successful of these cabaret outings is not Becker’s over-laboured, over-produced hospital allegory (though this does have its moments), but the hilarious Joshua by Dani Levy (Mein Fuhrer), in which the director (playing himself) is prescribed a course of pills to cure his pessimism about Germany. Hans Steinbichler’s enjoyable Fraktur, in which a haulage company boss travels to Frankfurt to wreak revenge on the board of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper for removing the Teutonic ‘Fraktur Gothic’ typeface from their masthead, runs Levi’s Allen-esque fantasy a close second. Tom Tykwer’s deftly edited but ultimately rather trivial Feierlich Travels stars chiselled Benno Furmann as a globetrotting businessman in meltdown.

Other directors make political statements - most convincingly in Hans Weingartner’s Preventive Action which is based on the true case of a university professor who was arrested under Germany’ anti-terrorist legislation because radical ideas expressed in his books and lectures made him a ‘potential perpetrator’. Fatih Akin’s Being Murat Kurnaz raises the case of a German-born Turkish national who was wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, while the ravishingly shot urban planning lament The Road We Do Not Walk Together by Dominik Graf ironises on Germany’s tendency to rip out its older inner-city buildings in a process of ‘architectural euthanasia’.

But in the end, alongside Levy’s, two contributions stand out: one is Romuald Karmakar’s deeply odd but also weirdly compelling Ramses, which consists of an interview with the Iranian owner of a seedy Berlin sex club that has fallen on bad times; the other is the final segment, Christoph Hochhäusler’s Seance, a haunting, allusive sci-fi fable in which the history of Germany since the 1940s is reimagined as that of a moon colony. It’s a lyrical end to a sprawling film, which shows a Germany as confused about the problem as it is about the solution.

Production companies
Herbstfilm Produktion
Piffl Medien

International sales
The Match Factory
(49) 221 539 7090

Producers
Dirk Wilutzky
Verena Rahmig

FIRST DAY
Director/screenplay
Angela Schanelec

Cinematography
Reinhold Vorschneider

Editor
Mathilde Bonnefoy

Main cast
Nina Monka

JOSHUA
Director/screenplay
Dani Levy

Cinematography
Carl-Friedrich Koschnick
Kai Rostasy

Editor
Anne Jünemann

Main cast
Dani Levy
Joshua Levy
Hans Hollman

BEING MURAT KURNAZ
Director/screenplay
Fatih Akin

Cinematography
Rainer Klausman

Editor
Andrew Bird

Main cast
Denis Moschitto
Kai Strittmatter

THE UNFINISHED
Director/screenplay
Nicolette Krebitz

Cinematography
Patrick Orth

Editor
Bettina Böhler

Main cast
Helene Hegemann
Jasmin Tabatabai
Sandra Hüller

BIAS
Director/screenplay
Sylke Enders

Cinematography
Inigo Westmeier

Editor
Dietmar Kraus

Main cast
Dennis Grawe
Karl Marcovics
Anneke Kim

THE ROAD WE DO NOT WALK TOGETHER
Director/screenplay
Dominik Graf

Co-dir/cinematography
Martin Gressmann

Editor
Katja Dringenberg

Voiceover
Jeanette Hain

FRAKTUR
Director/screenplay
Hans Steinbichler

Cinematography
Bella Halben

Editor
Niko Brinkmann

Main cast
Josef Bierbichler
Adriana Altaras
Tim Seyfi

A DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSION AT DESIGNATED TIMES
Director/screenplay
Isabelle Stever

Cinematography
Rali Raltchev

Editor
Oliver Newmann

Main cast
Johanna Nagel

PREVENTIVE ACTION
Director/screenplay
Hans Weingartner

Cinematography
Bernadette Paassen

Editor
Dirk Oetelshoven

Main cast
Christoph Jacobi
Claudia Geisler
Justus Carriere

FEIERLICH TRAVELS
Director/screenplay
Tom Tykwer

Cinematography
Frank Griebe

Editor
Mathilde Bonnefoy

Main cast
Benno Furmann
Eva Habermann

RAMSES
Director/screenplay
Romuald Karmakar

Cinematography
Frank Griebe

Editor
Johannes Weuthen

Main cast
Mahmoud Rahimzadiany

SICK HOUSE
Director
Wolfgang Becker

Screenplay
Wolfgang Becker
Jan-Ole Gerster

Cinematography
Jürgen Jürges

Editor
Peter Adam

Main cast
Peter Jordan
Andreas Hofer
Andreja Schneider

SEANCE
Director/screenplay
Christoph Hochhäusler

Cinematography
Bernhard Keller

Editor
Anja Conrad

Voiceover
Hans-Michael Rehberg