Goethe-Kino (Cinema Screening)
In Greek mythology, Atlas is one of the Titans, doomed to carry the heavens for all eternity. He is usually represented bent over, carrying the celestial globe or the whole world on his shoulder. In David Nawarth’s debut feature, Atlas is a mover named Walter Scholl, who works for a company carrying out forced evictions in Frankfurt a. M.. The former weight lifter loyally and stoically does his job though he can increasingly feel it in his back. One day during one of his assignments, he recognises his son Jan, whom he left when he was still a child. Without revealing who he is, Walter tries to make Jan’s acquaintance, not least to protect him and his family from the property sharks that intend to sell the house they live in at a high price and don’t shy away from using violence.
In their award-winning screenplay, David Nawrath and his co-writer Paul Salisbury cleverly combine an emotional father-son story with the reality of the sometimes criminally fought struggle over inner city real estate and of gentrification. They slowly increase the psychological weight that bears down on Walter and push him more and more out of his passivity towards action. In Rainer Bock they have found the ideal cast for the role of Walter, whose inner tension is always palpable but never erupts.
Germany 2018, colour, 100 mins. With English subtitles.
Director: David Nawrath. With Rainer Bock, Albrecht Schuch, Uwe Preuss, Thorsten Merten, Roman Kanonik, Nina Gummich, Zübeyde Bulut, Serdar Thenk Yildiz, Sasun Sayan
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David Nawrath, born 1980 in Berlin, grew up alternately in Germany and Iran. In 2005, together with Florian Schewe, he made his directing debut with the feature-length documentary Moharram - Jugend der ewigen Morgenröte, a portrait of modern teenagers in restrictive Tehran. In the same year Nawrath started studying directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). His short film Was bleibt was nominated for the German Short Film Award and for the European Short Film Award. At the festival Premiers Plans in Angers (France), Nawrath was awarded the Grand Jury Prize in the section 'European Student Films'.
After graduating in 2010, Nawrath was selected as one of six international filmmakers for the Résidence du Festival de Cannes in Paris in 2011. Back in Germany, he shot several docu-dramas and journalistic programmes for the culture TV channel Arte and the German broadcaster RBB, while also working on the screen play for the feature film Atlas (The Mover), which received a nomination for the Deutscher Drehbuchpreis (a prize for screenplays yet to be turned into a film) in 2016. The film premiered at the Hofer Filmtage 2018. At the Turin Film Festival, the film received a special prize from the jury and Rainer Bock won Best Lead Actor. At the German Film Award 2019 Atlas received nominations in the categories Best Screenplay and Best Lead Actor. (source: filmportal.de, edited)
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