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7:00 PM-9:30 PM
KinoTage: Julian Radlmaier - Phantoms of July + Online Q&A
Film|General Public
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Goethe-Institut London, London
- Price £6, £3 Concessions and for Goethe-Institut language students & library members.
- Part of series: KinoTage - Experience German Cinema
Light, playful and quietly humorous, Julian Radlmaier's sun drenched film interweaves the stories of three women and one man to explore inequality, escape, and uncertainty, but also freedom and friendship.
We are delighted that director Julian Radlmaier will join us for an online conversation following the screening.
A small town on the edge of the Harz mountains, Sangerhausen is one of the oldest settlements in the German state of Saxony Anhalt, famous for its roses. Just beyond the town rises the Hohe Linde spoil heap, a pyramid like remnant of the region's former copper mining industry. Sangerhausen - a place to long for or to leave behind?
Lotte, a maid in the early nineteenth century who spends her days emptying chamber pots certainly thinks so and attempts an escape. Ursula, a young mother in present day Sangerhausen, struggles to make ends meet with two jobs, cleaning at a furniture store in the morning and waitressing in the afternoon. Her longing is stirred when she meets a violinist from the big city. Neda, who has fled Tehran and now makes a living as a travel influencer, is reminded of a former lover through an encounter with a street sweeper. Meanwhile, Sung Nam, a tour guide travelling with the young Buk, once fled the Soviet Union to avoid military service in Afghanistan and now also finds himself in Sangerhausen.
Bathed in summer sunlight, the film brings these lives together with grace and understated humour. References to German Romanticism run throughout, particularly to the poet Novalis, whose "Blue Flower" became the symbol of a yearning for something unattainable and undefined. Yet the lives of the protagonists are far from romantic. Social inequality, precarious working conditions and xenophobia are a part of everyday life in Sangerhausen – now and then. Radlmaier subtly introduces fractures that disrupt the town's idyllic surface and reflect the shift to the political right but allows his characters the freedom to derive joy and friendship from this contradictory reality, and to connect, in solidarity, with the ghosts of the past.
Germany 2025, colour, 90 mins, German, Iranian with English subtitles.
Written, directed and edited by Julian Radlmaier. With Clara Schwinning, Maral Keshavarz, Henriette Confurius, Paula Schindler, Kyung-Taek Lie, Ghazal Shojaei, Buk Lie, Leonard Scheicher, Andreas Döhler, Jakob Schmidt, Marlene Hauser, Jeremie Galiana, Luise von Stein, Leonie Hämer, Andreas Bittl, Johannes Berzl, Franziska Hayner, Valerie Neuenfels, Horst Heine, Christopher Kane, Michael Hastung, Anton Gonopolski.
Festivals
Selection: Locarno, Switzerland, Concorso Internazionale; Sarajevo FF, Bosnia, Kinoscope, Busan IFF, South Korea, World Cinema; Altin Koza FF Adana, Turkey, World Cinema; São Paulo IFF, Brazil, Perspectiva Internacional; Viennale, Austria, Official Selection; Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, Canada; Hong Kong IFF, Global Vision; BAFICI Buenos Aires, Argentina, Genre and Vanguard Competition; Indie Lisboa, Portugal, Silvestre Competition.
Awards
Hamburg Producers Award, Filmfest Hamburg (Germany); Special Jury Award, Panorama of European Cinema Athens (Greece); Grand Jury Prize, Hainan Island Int. Film Festival (China); Special Jury Award, Bolzano Film Festival Bozen (Italy); Special Mention for the cast, BAFICI (Argentina).
About Julian Radlmaier
Julian Radlmaier, born in 1984 in Nuremberg, is a German-French filmmaker living in Berlin. He studied Film Studies and Art History in Berlin and Paris before going on to study directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) in Berlin. During this time, he worked as an assistant to Werner Schroeter and translated and edited film-theoretical writings by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. His two medium-length films, A Spectre Is Haunting Europe and A Proletarian Winter’s Tale, as well as his feature-length graduation film Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog, in which he also plays the lead role, were screened at renowned festivals worldwide (including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Viennale, Rio, Melbourne, and FICUNAM) and received numerous awards, among them two prizes from the German Film Critics Association. His second feature film, Bloodsuckers, premiered in the Encounters section of the Berlin International Film Festival in 2021 and had already received the German Screenplay Award in 2019. Phantoms of July premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. (Source: the film’s press materials.)
We are delighted that director Julian Radlmaier will join us for an online conversation following the screening.
A small town on the edge of the Harz mountains, Sangerhausen is one of the oldest settlements in the German state of Saxony Anhalt, famous for its roses. Just beyond the town rises the Hohe Linde spoil heap, a pyramid like remnant of the region's former copper mining industry. Sangerhausen - a place to long for or to leave behind?
Lotte, a maid in the early nineteenth century who spends her days emptying chamber pots certainly thinks so and attempts an escape. Ursula, a young mother in present day Sangerhausen, struggles to make ends meet with two jobs, cleaning at a furniture store in the morning and waitressing in the afternoon. Her longing is stirred when she meets a violinist from the big city. Neda, who has fled Tehran and now makes a living as a travel influencer, is reminded of a former lover through an encounter with a street sweeper. Meanwhile, Sung Nam, a tour guide travelling with the young Buk, once fled the Soviet Union to avoid military service in Afghanistan and now also finds himself in Sangerhausen.
Bathed in summer sunlight, the film brings these lives together with grace and understated humour. References to German Romanticism run throughout, particularly to the poet Novalis, whose "Blue Flower" became the symbol of a yearning for something unattainable and undefined. Yet the lives of the protagonists are far from romantic. Social inequality, precarious working conditions and xenophobia are a part of everyday life in Sangerhausen – now and then. Radlmaier subtly introduces fractures that disrupt the town's idyllic surface and reflect the shift to the political right but allows his characters the freedom to derive joy and friendship from this contradictory reality, and to connect, in solidarity, with the ghosts of the past.
Germany 2025, colour, 90 mins, German, Iranian with English subtitles.
Written, directed and edited by Julian Radlmaier. With Clara Schwinning, Maral Keshavarz, Henriette Confurius, Paula Schindler, Kyung-Taek Lie, Ghazal Shojaei, Buk Lie, Leonard Scheicher, Andreas Döhler, Jakob Schmidt, Marlene Hauser, Jeremie Galiana, Luise von Stein, Leonie Hämer, Andreas Bittl, Johannes Berzl, Franziska Hayner, Valerie Neuenfels, Horst Heine, Christopher Kane, Michael Hastung, Anton Gonopolski.
Festivals
Selection: Locarno, Switzerland, Concorso Internazionale; Sarajevo FF, Bosnia, Kinoscope, Busan IFF, South Korea, World Cinema; Altin Koza FF Adana, Turkey, World Cinema; São Paulo IFF, Brazil, Perspectiva Internacional; Viennale, Austria, Official Selection; Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, Canada; Hong Kong IFF, Global Vision; BAFICI Buenos Aires, Argentina, Genre and Vanguard Competition; Indie Lisboa, Portugal, Silvestre Competition.
Awards
Hamburg Producers Award, Filmfest Hamburg (Germany); Special Jury Award, Panorama of European Cinema Athens (Greece); Grand Jury Prize, Hainan Island Int. Film Festival (China); Special Jury Award, Bolzano Film Festival Bozen (Italy); Special Mention for the cast, BAFICI (Argentina).
About Julian Radlmaier
Julian Radlmaier, born in 1984 in Nuremberg, is a German-French filmmaker living in Berlin. He studied Film Studies and Art History in Berlin and Paris before going on to study directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) in Berlin. During this time, he worked as an assistant to Werner Schroeter and translated and edited film-theoretical writings by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. His two medium-length films, A Spectre Is Haunting Europe and A Proletarian Winter’s Tale, as well as his feature-length graduation film Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog, in which he also plays the lead role, were screened at renowned festivals worldwide (including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Viennale, Rio, Melbourne, and FICUNAM) and received numerous awards, among them two prizes from the German Film Critics Association. His second feature film, Bloodsuckers, premiered in the Encounters section of the Berlin International Film Festival in 2021 and had already received the German Screenplay Award in 2019. Phantoms of July premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. (Source: the film’s press materials.)
Location
Goethe-Institut London
50 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2PH
United Kingdom
50 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2PH
United Kingdom