GOETHE FILMS: Lose My Self – A Portrait of Sandra Hüller
Presented by the Goethe-Institut
with Rendezvous with Madness Festival
35mm screening!
Whether in the Cannes hit comedy "Toni Erdmann" or the exorcism drama "Requiem", the prolific Sandra Hüller (who was just named German "Actress of the Year") commands the screen, winning 3x best actress at the Berlinale, a European Film Award & the Toronto Film Critics Association Award. At TIFF19 she shone in the French productions "Proxima" & "Sibyl". GOETHE FILMS honors the versatile artist with a mid-career retrospective of many of her best features & shorts, some known, some discoveries.
Theatre Actress of the Year 2020
German Cross of Merit 2020
"Requiem" (Germany, 2006, 93 min.) directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, starring Sandra Hüller ("Toni Erdmann"), Burghart Klaussner ("Good Bye, Lenin!"; "The Reader"), Imogen Kogge ("Barefoot"), Anna Blomeier ("Young Goethe In Love"), Nicholas Reinke ("Buddenbrooks"), Jens Harzer ("Same Same But Different"), Walter Schmidinger ("From the Life of the Marionettes")
A small town in the 1970s, Germany. Michaela, 21, has grown up in a deeply religious family, with a weak father and a cold-hearted mother. Despite her long battle with epilepsy, Michaela burns to leave home and study at the university. There, her first taste of freedom, her budding love for Stefan and her friendship with Hanna crack open the shell of faith and family within which she had always felt secure and protected. The result is a breakdown. Not a normal epileptic attack, but a frightening onrush of grotesque faces and voices. Afraid of being sent back home to her family, Michaela seeks help from a priest who reinforces her conviction that she is possessed. Though Stefan and Hanna entreat her to seek psychiatric help, they are unable to break through the dense religious and moral ties binding Michaela to her family.
"A soul searching classic." – Time Out
"One of the year's best films." – Independent on Sunday
“A naturalistic and thrillingly powerful film, with a stand-out performance from Hüller at its centre.” – BBC
Awards & Festivals:
5 German Film Awards: Best Feature Film, Best Leading Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound Design, Best Costume Design
Berlinale Silver Bear for Hüller (Best Actress) & FIPRESCI Award
2 Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya Awards (Best Film & Best Performance by an Actress)
Sandra Hüller (born in 1978) discovered her passion for acting as a child. On stage, she often plays strong women, such as the widow of Nirvana’s front singer Kurt Cobain in Tom Schneider's play “For Love” (2009), Queen Elizabeth I in “Virgin Queen” (2009) at Volksbühne Berlin, or her most celebrated and current role as "Hamlet" at Schauspielhaus Bochum.
She gained international recognition in the lead role in Maren Ade’s tragicomedy “Toni Erdmann” (2016), which premiered at Cannes and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. At Berlinale 2020 she starred in psychological drama "Sleep" as well as Sundance competition title "Exile". Next, Hüller will star in the comedy "The Black Square" by Peter Meister.
The title of our GOETHE FILMS Sandra Hüller retrospective is taken from her film ”Lose My Self,” her second collaboration with director Jan Schomburg, whose drama “Above Us Only Sky” we are showing in this series. The feature series will be accompanied by Hüller shorts & experiments on our film blog.
Hans-Christian Schmid (born 1965) studied documentary film at the Munich University for Television and Film. In his final thesis film "Die Mechanik des Wunders" (1992) he dealt for the first time with organized piety. Schmid, who has 33 awards to his name to date, then went on to Los Angeles to study screenwriting at the University of Southern California. "Requiem" (2006), which takes up the theme of excessive religiosity again, was screened in the Berlinale competition. Schmid's family drama "Was bleibt" was also invited to the Berlinale Competition in 2012. He has been successful with "Storm", "Distant Lights", "Crazy", "23", many of which the Goethe-Institut Toronto has shown.
He is currently writing "Wir sind dann wohl die Angehörigen", a drama about the abduction of Hamburg millionaire Jan Philipp Reemtsma from the perspective of his then 13-year-old son.
Related Events:
ABOVE US ONLY SKY by Jan Schomburg
AMOUR FOU by Jessica Hausner
FINSTERWORLD by Frauke Finsterwalder
EXILE by Visar Morina
IN THE AISLES by Thomas Stuber
Part of the Goethe-Institut's focus on German film
Back
