guests of honor

FILMFEST MÜNCHEN will be presenting the CineMerit Award to Barbara Sukowa, an actress who has played enigmatic and complex female characters in German and international films over the decades. On this occasion, screenings of ROSA LUXEMBURG (1986) and TWO OF US (2019) will look back on Sukowa’s body of work. The award ceremony itself will be followed by a screening of her latest film, DALÍLAND, in which Sukowa gives yet another impressive performance as Salvador Dalí’s wife, Gala Éluard.

Austrian director Jessica Hausner will be honored in a thorough retrospective at the Filmfest. Her previous five feature-length films — LOVELY RITA (2001), HOTEL (2004), LOURDES (2009), MAD LOVE (2014), and LITTLE JOE (2019) — will be shown along with her latest, CLUB ZERO, which had its world premiere in competition at Cannes this year. Its screening at the Filmfest will be the first in Germany. This retrospective provides an opportunity to explore the director’s hallmarks, her keen sense of style, and her skillful play with genre elements. Jessica Hausner will be attending the German premiere of CLUB ZERO and other screenings of her earlier works.

For the fourth time, the Filmfest is cooperating with Museum Brandhorst. Artist A. L. Steiner has put together a program of films and videos, collectively titled URANIANS, which includes several premieres and tributes, with a special focus on works that depict, question, and celebrate queer and female-presenting sexuality. URANIANS will include a homage to Shu Lea Cheang, whose work ranges from queer cinema, cyberpunk, and pornography to installations and performance art. Two short films and three feature films from Cheang’s œuvre will be screened, including the world premiere of her latest film, UKI, in which a sex worker and replicant named Reiko tries to regain control of her digital body. This is a cinematic and sexual tour de force, inspired in part by Ridley Scott’s BLADE RUNNER.

UKI

Dalíland

Club Zero

Spotlight

Star-studded movies, outstanding genre films, and films that are truly special: all this and much more are what you’ll find in the Spotlight section this year. If you are particularly interested in well-established actors and actresses who continually set new challenges for themselves, we can recommend the cloak-and-dagger film THE EDGE OF THE BLADE by Vincent Perez, with Roschdy Zem in the role of the charismatic fencing master. Or BLONDI, the first film directed by celebrated Argentinian actress Dolores Fonzi, who plays the title character. Or DALÍLAND, with Sir Ben Kingsley as Salvador Dalí and our CineMerit award-winner Barbara Sukowa as Dalí’s wife, Gala.

Finn Wolfhard from the science-fiction series STRANGER THINGS is the male lead in WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD, the first film directed by actor Jesse Eisenberg (THE SOCIAL NETWORK). Noted British director Stephen Frears (DANGEROUS LIAISONS) has submitted his latest film, THE LOST KING, starring Sally Hawkins (HAPPY-GO-LUCKY) and Steve Coogan, who appeared in Frears’ film PHILOMENA. Also terrific: Timothy Spall, known from a fabulous biopic about English master painter William Turner. In the role of a war veteran in the Icelandic comedy NORTHERN COMFORT, Spall and his fellow air passengers attempt to overcome their fear of flying. William Shatner, as Captain Kirk on the starship Enterprise, never really had any problems with flying; he is the subject of a documentary portrait called YOU CAN CALL ME BILL by director and Filmfest regular Alexandre O. Philippe.

As he so often does, Hermann Vaske puts a whole crowd of prominent individuals in front of the camera as he once again deals with his hobbyhorse: the question of creativity. CAN CREATIVITY SAVE THE WORLD? is the question he asks of well-known figures in the arts — and there is also an exhibition of Vaske’s work at the Literaturhaus! Exuberantly creative is the Brazilian animated film PERLIMPS, in which two secret agents are sent on a mission to an enchanted forest. Since 1983, Franz X. Gernstl has been on tour with his companions HP Fischer and Stefan Ravasz. The film GERNSTL’S TRAVELS: IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING brings together on screen the most emotional and amusing stories they have collected over four decades.

Star-studded German cinema is also on offer: for example, in ONE FOR THE ROAD (by Markus Goller, featuring Frederick Lau and Nora Tschirner) and PARADISE (by Boris Kunz, featuring Kostja Ullmann and Corinna Kirchhoff). From Italy comes grandiose and original entertainment in the form of Paolo Genove’s THE FIRST DAY OF MY LIFE (starring Toni Servillo) and DRY by Paolo Virzí. And for those who wish to see a classic of Taiwanese cinema on the big screen in a brilliantly restored 4K version, MILLENNIUM MAMBO from 2001 is just the thing.

International independents

Unusual discoveries, indie comedies, and political dynamite — films outside the mainstream. That’s how we describe the International Independents section. Political dynamite is in abundance this year, in various forms. For THE PADILLA AFFAIR, for example, Cuban director Pavel Giroud was able to draw upon old archival footage that had previously been kept under lock and key. It shows the poet Heberto Padilla, who has just been released from prison, giving a speech to the Cuban Writers’ Guild in which he accuses himself and others of having betrayed the revolution. Giroud combines this unsettling contemporary document with other archival footage to create a gripping documentary that tells us a lot about political pressure and freedom of expression in Latin America, then and now. Helena Ignez, an icon of Brazilian underground cinema, on the other hand, makes a strong sex-positive statement in JOY IS THE ACID TEST. The 80-year-old goes online to coach women on the female orgasm, thinks up queer feminist projects, and preaches “the Catholic revolution” to the Church with the help of a guitar-playing priest.

Rebelling against her strict Catholic upbringing in a mountain village in Valais in 1900, a young woman embarks on the path to emancipation from her stifling circumstances in the Swiss feature film THUNDER. In the end, there is always hope for some change, even in today’s India. At first glance, there seems to be no way out of the poverty that envelops sales representative SHIVAMMA and her family, but the marketing strategy of an energy drink nevertheless gives her confidence. In the city of Srinagar in the eternal political flashpoint of Kashmir, a woman sets out to find her abducted husband and ends up in a complicated situation of political entanglement and emotional turmoil (THE WINTER WITHIN).

Joy is the acid test

SHIVAMMA

THE WINTER WITHIN

Both BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND by Canadian director Trevor Anderson and EDGE OF EVERYTHING by US directing team Sophia Sabella and Pablo Feldman (world premiere at the Filmfest!) shed light on the trials and tribulations that await those on the cusp of adulthood. Iris and her twin brother also come of age in the Ecuadorian feature OCTOPUS SKIN, while two schoolgirls in South Korea are less concerned with their sexual awakening than with a nasty bully they seek to take revenge on — until the tide suddenly turns in HAIL TO HELL.

Quite suddenly, a person’s world can be turned upside down: by a diagnosis of cancer (in the case of a career-oriented anchorwoman at a Ukrainian TV station in LUCKY GIRL) or the death of a loved one (as in the masterpiece A MAN, winner of eight Japanese Academy Awards), or in another way, such as in the Israeli-French feature THE OTHER WIDOW, in which a playwright’s mistress is the last to hear of his passing, then participates in the mourning ritual at his home and meets his family, including his wife.

This sounds more dramatic than cheerful, but there is humor among the International Independents. In THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD, a few dry punchlines hit home during a day-long speed dating event, even if this film by North Macedonian director Teona Struger Mitevska (GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNYA) is about a soldier’s guilt and his hope of finding forgiveness. And in the animated film BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN by Pierre Földes, six short stories by Haruki Murakami are given a delightfully offbeat treatment — featuring a frog as the talkative protagonist.

young soul rebels

Beyond silence

40 Years ffmuc

For this year’s anniversary edition, the Filmfest has dug into the archives and will be screening, free of charge, some of the highlights from the four decades of its existence, from well-known classics to best-kept secrets. Munich audiences loved the Oscar-nominated film BEYOND SILENCE by Caroline Link when it was screened in 1996. The film tells the story of a young woman named Lara, the daughter of deaf parents, who searches for and finds her own way through life. The feminist ’80s film BORN IN FLAMES by Lizzie Borden, FINE DEAD GIRLS (2002) by Dalibor Matanić from Croatia, and Jakob Lass’s LOVE STEAKS (2013) are waiting to be rediscovered. Also screening is YOUNG SOUL REBELS, which first brought British director and video artist Sir Isaac Julien to the Filmfest in 1991. Julien also came to Munich in May of this year as part of a collaboration with Museum Brandhorst.