We are pleased to have been able to re-schedule the screening of Longing, which could not take place as part of our Valeska Grisebach double-bill on 14 March due to a technical defect. And we are equally pleased that this re-schedule screening will be introduced by Leila Mukhida, Cambridge University.
A man and a woman live in a village not far from Berlin. Out here, it feels as though the city were miles away. The couple have loved each other since they were children. They are inseparable. Both are now in their early thirties; he is a welder and a member of the auxiliary fire brigade. She works a few hours a week as a home help and sings in the choir. Their blissful relationship is so untrammeled by life’s little ups and downs that others regard them with a mixture of astonishment and mistrust. They give the impression of being as innocent and unsuspecting as a couple of children. One day, the man goes on a business trip to a large town with the fire brigade. After a night of heavy drinking and carousing he wakes up in another woman’s apartment. He can barely remember what went on. His efforts to find out what did occur lead to a passionate affair.
About Leila Mukhida
Dr Leila Mukhida is Lecturer in Modern German Studies at University of Cambridge. Her research brings together critical theory, philosophy, and film studies, in order to examine the ways in which the film-going experience has been and continues to be theorised as 'political' in the German intellectual context. Her forthcoming book,
Sensitive Subjects, analyses German-language films by directors including Valeska Grisebach and Michael Haneke through early film theory from the 1920s and 1930s. In 2011 Dr Mukhida directed a short documentary on Islam,
The Greatest Gift, and she recently produced the film
Mixed Messages (2016), set in modern-day Berlin.
Germany 2006, Colour, 35mm, 88 mins. German with English subtitles.
Written and directed by Valeska Grisebach. With Andreas Müller, Ilka Welz, Anett Dornbusch, Erika Lemke, Markus Werner, Doritha Richter, Detlef Baumanngi.
About the Director
Valeska Grisebach was born in Bremen, Germany. She is a graduate of the Vienna Film Academy, where she trained in directing under Michael Haneke. Her features include Be My Star (Mein Stern), which won a FIPRESCI Critics' Award at the Festival, and Longing (Sehnsucht). Western, her latest film, premiered in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
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