GOETHE FILMS: Lose My Self – A Portrait of Sandra Hüller
Presented by the Goethe-Institut
Toronto premiere!
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
"In the Aisles" (Germany, 2018, 125 min.), directed by Thomas Stuber, based on a short story by Clemens Meyer, starring Sandra Hüller ("Toni Erdmann"), Franz Rogowski ("Undine", "Transit"), Peter Kurth ("Good Bye, Lenin!"), Ramona Kunze-Libnow ("Charité"), Henning Peker ("In the Fade"), Steffen Scheumann ("Grand Budapest Hotel"), Matthias Brenner ("Charité") and others
After the shy and reclusive Christian (Rogowski) loses his job, he finds work at a wholesale market. Bruno takes him under his wing and quickly becomes a fatherly friend to him. Among the endless aisles, Christian meets “Sweets”-Marion (Hüller). He is instantly smitten by her enigmatic charm. But Marion is married, and Christian's feelings for her seem to remain unrequited. As Christian slowly becomes a member of the supermarket family, driving fork lifts and stacking shelves begin to mean much more to him than meets the eye — especially when Marion does not return to work one day.
Director Thomas Stuber opens a window onto the world of an ordinary worker in the east German provinces. A choreography of people and things, reality, desires and dreams unfolds in precisely framed images. The everyday is transformed into a magical realism which transcends this tender love story to point tentatively towards the concept of hope. (Berlinale)
"The brilliant Hüller emerges as a fiesty sparring partner, who keeps Rogowski on his toes. Filled with moxie, Hüller's character Marion is a delightfully unrestrained stacker of Goods, and she immediately puts Christian (or freshling as she teasingly calls him) through his flirtacious paces." — Screenanarchy
"Hüller shines in an intriguing fable about a giant supermarket." — The Guardian
"We could spend forever watching two such interesting actors as Hüller and Rogowski glimmer at each other, his bashful hopefulness meeting her considering eyes, which are strangely serious however merry or mischievous her expression." — Variety
Awards:
Athens International Film Festival 2018 Competition: Best Screenplay
Athens International Film Festival 2018 - Greek Film Critics Association (GFCA) Award
Berlinale 2018 Guild Film Prize: Best Director
Berlinale 2018 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury Competition
German Film Awards 2018: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
German Screenplay Award 2015
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 the 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.
Thomas Stuber was born in Leipzig in 1981. Starting in 2002, he worked on several film and TV productions as a script/continuity supervisor and director's assistant. From 2004 to 2011, he studied stage direction at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. While completing his studies, he received a number of awards for his short film “We're fine” and “Teenage Angst”, which was invited to the Berlin International Film Festival 2008. His graduation film “Of Dogs and Horses” (2011) won the Student Oscar® in Silver as well as the German Short Film Award. Together with Leipzig author Clemens Meyer, Thomas Stuber was nominated for the German Screenplay Award for their work on "A Heavy Heart" in 2014, and they received that award for "In den Gängen" ("In the Aisles") in 2015.
Related Events:
REQUIEM by Hans-Christian Schmid
ABOVE US ONLY SKY by Jan Schomburg
AMOUR FOU by Jessica Hausner
FINSTERWORLD by Frauke Finsterwalder
EXILE by Viser Morina
Part of the Goethe-Institut's focus on German film
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