German Films Quarterly 1 · 2009 AT THE BERLINALE EVERYONE ELSE (In Competition) STORM (In Competition) GERMANY 09 (Out of Competition) PORTRAITS Emily Atef, Hans Steinbichler, Flying Moon Film, Heike Makatsch German Films Quarterly 1 · 2009 directors’ portraits 4 THE STRANGER IN HER A portrait of Emily Atef 6 INITIATION IN THE “EXECUTIONERS’ CINEMA” A portrait of Hans Steinbichler producers’ portrait 8 FLYING HIGH FOR 10 YEARS A portrait of Flying Moon Filmproduktion actress’ portrait 10 AS TIMES CHANGE A portrait of Heike Makatsch 12 news in production 18 AYLA Su Turhan 19 DIE FRAU MIT DER GEBROCHENEN NASE Srdjan Koljevic 20 FRIENDSHIP! Markus Goller 21 GANGS Rainer Matsutani 21 HANGTIME Wolfgang Groos 22 HENRI VIER Jo Baier 23 MARIA, IHM SCHMECKT’S NICHT! Neele Leana Vollmar 24 THE OTHER CHELSEA: THE DONETSK STORY Jakob Preuss 25 DIE PAEPSTIN Soenke Wortmann 26 POLL Chris Kraus 27 POSTKARTEN NACH COPACABANA Thomas Kronthaler 28 RÉSISTE – AUFSTAND DER PRAKTIKANTEN Jonas Grosch 29 SOUL KITCHEN Fatih Akin 30 TANNOED Bettina Oberli 31 WAFFENSTILLSTAND Lancelot von Naso 32 ZARTE PARASITEN Christian Becker, Oliver Schwabe 33 ZIMMER Michael Dreher 34 ZWOELF METER OHNE KOPF Sven Taddicken new german films 36 24h BERLIN – EIN TAG IM LEBEN 24H BERLIN – A DAY IN THE LIFE 70 different directors 37 ALLE ANDEREN EVERYONE ELSE Maren Ade 38 DER ARCHITEKT THE ARCHITECT Ina Weisse 39 DEUTSCHLAND 09 GERMANY 09 13 different directors 40 DEUTSCHLAND NERVT MADE IN DEUTSCHLAND Hans-Erich Viet 41 DISTANZ DISTANCE Thomas Sieben 42 DORFPUNKS Lars Jessen 43 EFFI BRIEST Hermine Huntgeburth 44 DIE GEDULDETEN WE CAME, WE STAYED, WE GOT DEPORTED Natascha Breuers, Ralf Jesse 45 DIE GESCHICHTE VOM BRANDNER KASPAR Joseph Vilsmaier 46 IL GIARDINO Michael Ester 47 HARLAN – IM SCHATTEN VON JUD SUESS HARLAN – IN THE SHADOW OF THE JEW SUESS Felix Moeller 48 HILDE Kai Wessel 49 HIMMEL UND MEHR – DOROTHEA BUCK AUF DER SPUR THE SKY AND BEYOND – ON THE TRAIL OF DOROTHEA BUCK Alexandra Pohlmeier 50 IM WINTER EIN JAHR A YEAR AGO IN WINTER Caroline Link 51 IN BERLIN Michael Ballhaus, Ciro Cappellari 52 JOHN RABE Florian Gallenberger 53 LA BOHÈME Robert Dornhelm 54 LIPPELS TRAUM LIPPEL’S DREAM Lars Buechel 55 MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN – ICH LEBE NUR DURCH DAS AUGE MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN – I LIVE WHAT I SEE Stella Tinbergen 56 MITTE ENDE AUGUST SOMETIME IN AUGUST Sebastian Schipper 57 PARKOUR Marc Rensing 58 PERESTROIKA – UMBAU EINER WOHNUNG PERESTROIKA – RECONSTRUCTION OF A FLAT Christiane Buechner 59 DIE PERLMUTTERFARBE Marcus H. Rosenmueller 60 PHANTOMSCHMERZ PHANTOM PAIN Matthias Emcke 61 POLAR Michael Koch 62 REMARQUE – SEIN WEG ZUM RUHM ERICH MARIA REMARQUE Hanno Bruehl 63 SANKT PAULI! RAUSGEHEN – WARMMACHEN – WEGHAUEN SANKT PAULI! RUN OUT – WARM UP – SCORE OFF Joachim Bornemann 64 DIE SCHIMMELREITER SHEEP AND CHIPS Lars Jessen 65 SCHLAEFT EIN LIED IN ALLEN DINGEN SLEEPING SONGS Andreas Struck 66 SEEMANNSTREUE SEA DOG’S DEVOTION Anna Kalus 67 SIEBEN TAGE SONNTAG SEVEN DAYS SUNDAY Niels Laupert 68 STURM STORM Hans-Christian Schmid 69 TANGERINE Irene von Alberti 70 EIN TEIL VON MIR A PIECE OF ME Christoph Roehl 71 DAS VATERSPIEL KILL DADDY GOOD NIGHT Michael Glawogger 72 WELTSTADT CITY OF THE WORLD Christian Klandt 73 DIE WUNDERSAME WELT DER WASCHKRAFT THE WONDROUS WORLD OF LAUNDRY Hans-Christian Schmid 74 ZUM DRITTEN POL TO THE THIRD POLE Andreas Nickel, Juergen Czwienk 77 film exporters 79 foreign representatives · imprint DIRECTOR’S PORTRAIT You can’t get much more multicultural: born in Berlin in 1971, Emily Atef has a French mother and an Iranian father. Because of her fa- ther’s work as an engineer, the family moved to Los Angeles when Atef was seven. At the age of 12 she returned to Europe, where she lived with French relatives. But Atef felt too restricted in the small town in French Jura: when she was 19, she went to Paris to become an actress. Later she appeared on the stage of various London the- aters, but also worked on her first short films. Finally, her friend Nicole Gerhards advised her to move to Berlin and study at the German Film & Television Academy (dffb). Her first film there, the short documentary XX to XY – Fighting to be Jake (2003), already focused on a person who had lost her roots: a woman who wants to become a man. After the short films Sundays (2002) and I Love You I Kill You (2003), she persuaded the college director Reinhard Hauff to allow her to make a full-length film in her third year: Molly’s Way was premiered at the Munich Film Festival, and sub- sequently won prizes all over the world. The Stranger in Me (2008) celebrated its premiere in Cannes, and has received inter- national awards in Brussels and São Paulo to date. In 2009, she is planning to shoot Kill Me and in 2010, the film version of the novel Night Train to Lisbon. Atef says that Peter Greenaway gave her vital encouragement to direct films: the British filmmaker did not offer her a part in 8 1/2 Women after a casting, but he was most impressed by a short film that she produced in a single day, especially for the casting: she still has the enthusiastic letter that he sent her on that occasion. Contact: Players Sophienstrasse 21 · 10178 Berlin/Germany phone +49-30-28 51 68 0 · fax +49-30-28 51 68 6 email: [email protected] · www.players.de Emily Atef (photo © Maciej Zienkiewicz) THE STRANGER IN HER A portrait of Emily Atef Talented filmmaker Emily Atef lives in Berlin, but she makes get. But it affects everyone: fathers, a woman’s friends, and the whole films for the world: her characters are always traveling – in search of family.” She shows not only the woman concerned, but also her themselves. environment – in an equally credible way. At the beginning of the film, the illness has led the young mother Rebecca into the middle of Emily Atef can argue quite passionately about films. And things really nowhere: she is lying in the woods, unprotected and lifeless. In the first heat up if you call her works “women’s films,” because she doesn’t part of the film, Atef keeps cutting back from this state of abandon- like categories. “I don’t want a label of any kind. I just want to tell a ment to the time before her flight, to moments of helplessness and story close to my characters,” she says. She is interested in dramas social pressure: a mother who does not function properly. And then that still give hope some chance. she disappears to save herself – and her baby. And yet up until now, it is true that she has explored the worlds of The film is realistic, but at the same time Atef works very precisely women; most recently in The Stranger in Me, which is all about with her motifs, with an iconography of birth – from Rebecca’s con- postnatal depression. “Of course this is an illness that only women can finement via her spiritual rebirth to her later attempt to rebuild her german films quarterly director’s portrait 1 · 2009 4 relationship. A woman who was ready to drown herself becomes a film, and Kill Me – being produced by Wueste Film West – should person buoyed up by water. cost three million Euros or more. The next step is already definite: Night Train to Lisbon. The Swiss company C-Films will take res- Atef ’s cameraman Henner Besuch found restrained but eloquent ponsibility for the film version of Pascal Mercier’s best-seller, which is images of this using a hand-held camera: “He had to narrate the state to be a large-scale international production. Here, an aging professor of depression without words,” says Atef. For her heroine has lost the faces a crisis over the meaning of life and sets off in search of his place ability to speak; she does nothing more than stare blankly at the in the world. world. Emily Atef spoke with Christoph Groener Susanne Wolff plays the silent, lost Rebecca in a wonderfully con- vincing way; Atef chose her for this role precisely because she does not have a child yet. And Wolff has an acting partner of equal ability in Johann von Buelow: he plays a man who is little more than a pro- vider initially, making very little effort to understand his wife, but who suffers from feelings of guilt later on. “Why are the women in Germany left alone so much?” the director was asked after screenings at the Mar del Plata festival in Argentina. “Why is the man willing to take his wife back?” was the question asked by one woman (!) when Atef presented the film in Pusan. This kind of experience makes Atef happy: when different cultures chafe against each other as a result of her film. For she represents several cultures in herself, having lived in Germany, France, the USA and Great Britain. Perhaps it is the “stranger in her” that leads Atef to these universal themes. She writes in English, which is the closest she comes to a language of “her own” among many. Her “creative partner” Esther Bernstorff translates English passages into German and writes part of the screenplay herself: in the case of The Stranger in Me, this team work took an uncharacteristically long time – two years: “We made so many mistakes,” Atef recalls. In earlier versions of the script, Rebecca was over-burdened by her past as a child brought up in an institution. But dramaturge Annedore von Donop recommended tel- ling just the mother’s story, rather than presenting a “social drama”.