A German construction crew is to build a hydroelectric power station in a remote part of Bulgaria. An EU infrastructure project that everyone knows about - except for the locals. The construction work is not well prepared and threatens to come to a standstill. As the time passes, the workers and the local villagers slowly get to know each other relying on basic English and gestures for their communication. Different alliances and friendships but also rivalries develop. The foreign country and the stunning scenery awaken the German men's sense of adventure, but they are also confronted with their own prejudices and the mistrust of the locals. Director Valeska Grisebach brilliantly manages the tension inherent in this difficult constellation while giving space and complexity to her characters who, like in her other films, are played by non-actors giving stunning performances.
A horse, a dispute over water supplies, lonely men that speak little, a duel of some sort seems immanent – Grisebach uses all these typical elements of the Western to tell a very specific, carefully plotted story set in today’s Europe where work takes people more and more often into unfamiliar territories.
Germany / Bulgaria / Austria / Monaco 2017, 121 mins. Director: Valeska Grisebach
With Meinhard: Meinhard Neumann, Vincent: Reinhardt Wetrek, Adrian: Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, Veneta: Veneta Frangova, Vyara: Vyara Borisova, Wanko: Kevin Bashev.
The film will be released in the UK on 13 April by
New Wave Films.
In the run up to the UK release of Valeska’s widely acclaimed Western by New Wave Films and our preview screening of the film we will show the director’s previous feature, her graduation film
Mein Stern (Be My Star, 2001) and Sehnsucht (Longing, 2006), her first full length feature.
Valeska Grisebach was born in Bremen, Germany. She studied German Studies and Philosophy in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. She is a graduate of the Vienna Film Academy, where she trained in directing under Michael Haneke. Her features include Be My Star, which was nominated for the Adolf Grimme Award in 2002 and won the FIPRESCI Prize at Toronto International Film Festival and the main prize at Torino Film Festival, and Longing (2006), which was shown in the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her latest film Western (2017) premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
Tickets
Presented as part of the Goethe-Kino.
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