New films by Randa Chahoud, Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu and Skinny Myers are among 28 world premieres set to screen at this year’s Munich International Film Festival (June 26 – July 5).
Chahoud’s adaptation of Mithu Sanyal’s 2021 novel Identitti about the representation and legacy of colonialism is one of the 16 world premieres in the festival’s New German Cinema sidebar.
Starring Stephanie Eidt and Amanda Barbarei Vieira with one of Germany’s best known rappers Sabrina Setlur in a supporting role, the Razor Film production will be released in German cinemas by Alamode Film on November 12.
More than half of the films (9) selected for the showcase of new German cinema have been made by female directors.
They range from Milena Aboyan’s Sisters in Arms, based on Shida Bazyar’s novel focusing on everyday racism and far-right terrorism and Paula Roenneberg’s darkly humorous indictment of the perfect family in her debut feature Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.
They also include Claudia Müller’s documentary exploring the work of the late artist Rebecca Horn in Rebecca Horn - The Secret Life of Things to Susanne Heinrich’s second feature take on the subject of motherhood in The Miserable Mother and veteran filmmaker Jutta Brückner’s first film in 20 years, In My Mother’s Mirror, starring Corinna Harfouch as an archaeologist haunted by memories, illusions, and repressed truths after her mother’s death.
Other world premieres in the New German Cinema sidebar include Nicolas Ehret’s dystopian drama Echo of Tomorrow’s War, starring Ulrich Matthes and European Shooting Star Enno Trebs as an estranged father and son in a Europe that has failed politically and is succumbing to military escalation, and David Helmut’s debut feature So Happy It Hurts which follows an influencer from the filming of a reality show in Bali to a mysterious jungle commune.
A further 12 world premieres have been programmed in the festival’s various other sections.
The CineCoPro competition will feature Transit Times by Moldovan-born director Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu, marking her third collaboration with the German production outfit Weydemann Bros. after Anishoara and Panihida, and Harald Sicheritz’s portrait of the future Austrian politician in Bruno - The Young Kreisky. The CineVision competition will host the premiere of Iranian photographer and documentary filmmaker Ehsan Noortaqani’s debut fiction feature Daydreaming Lullabies.
Meanwhile, the CineRebels competition will host the premiere of US independent Skinner Myers’ avantgarde horror thriller Moodswing Whiskey, and the International Independents section is showing Pitico - Hermes Ayres Azevedo (1881-1959) - Local Historian by the veteran Brazilian filmmaker Júlio Bressane, one of the leading figures in the country’s Cinema Marginal film movement in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
The Spotlight sidebar has programmed world premieres of six new German productions including Markus Goller’s 23,000 Lives, inspired by the activities of the Jugend rettet NGO to save lives at sea in Mediterranean, Lars Jessen’s A Stroll To Syracus, adapted from Friedrich Christian Delius’ novel Der Spaziergang von Rostock nach Syrakus, and Veronika Kaserer’s documentary portrait Simon Messner - From The Shadows, casting a spotlight on the son of the legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner as he sets out to make the first ascent of a remote peak in Pakistan.
The 43rd Munich International Film Festival will open June 27 with a gala screening of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, with Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler and August Diehl attending in person with the director.
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