Film
Leif in Concert

Goethe-Cinema Ottawa

Wed, 12/09/2020
7:30 PM Amphitheater, Saint Paul University

Leif in Concert.

Director: Christian Klandt, 2019, Germany, 115 mins
With: Luise Heyer, Klaus Manchen, Gerdy Zint, Godehard Giese, Maryam Zaree, Bela B. Felsenheimer, Dr. Mark Benecke

German with English subtitles.

A pub is a special place: Lene had taken some time off, but now she's back at the counter of the jazz-blues bar, just like before. For this special evening she has hired the Danish musician Leif (aka Poorboy), whom she had met in the meantime. During the day, suppliers drop by, other musicians come to rehearse; friends and acquaintances soon populate the bar as well as the selected regular audience, including doctor-drummer Bela B. Felsenheimer, Tilo Prückner, Jule Böwe and the criminal biologist and edutainer Dr. Mark Benecke. The bizarre bar stories and conversations are about elf pop, invisible mobile phones or maggots eating their way through corpses; and we are allowed to eavesdrop from the next table, so to speak. Between 11 a.m. and 1 a.m., the declaration of love to smoky cellar bars, their stories and characters plays out wherever they may be located: for some it is the "parlour", for others a stage for all kinds of performances, a world of its own, detached from that outside, microcosm and universe at the same time; it is therefore only logical that the often wonderfully improvised film never leaves its dimly lit location, the magic would be broken.