GERMAN FILMS AT 19th CHENNAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Ever since the Indo Cine Appreciation Foundation (ICAF) first organized the Chennai International Film Festival (CIFF) in 2003, the event has seen a gradual growth in its popularity over the years. Now organizing the 19th edition of the CIFF, the event will be held from 30th December 2021 to 6th January 2022. The aim of this festival is dual in nature- it focuses on presenting the best of International and Indian films in Chennai while also taking the opportunity to showcase the best of Tamil films to the world. CIFF is dedicated towards creating a platform through the medium of cinema that enables people from different backgrounds, such as nationalities, cultures and ethnicities, to come together and appreciate the film cultures of different countries in the context of social and cultural ethos.

Goethe-Institut, Chennai, has been participating in the film festival every year. The film selections for the same include current award-winning productions that can enable Chennaiites to experience contemporary German Films and expose them to German culture, thereby bridging the cultural barrier between the two countries.


GERMAN CONTEMPORARY FILM 

THE LAST EXECUTION
(NAHSCHUSS)  |  Dir: Franziska Stünkel | 2019-2020 | 116 min. | Germany


The GDR, early 1970s. The engineer Franz Walter receives a tempting offer from the HVA, the foreign intelligence service of the GDR. As an agent, he is supposed to help prepare the GDR for the 1974 Football World Cup, which takes place in the FRG. In return, he is offered a professorship. Franz, who had already been active as an unofficial employee for the Stasi since 1967, accepts the offer. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent abroad to the West. Over time, however, Franz's discomfort about the excessive espionage activities and his questionable missions grows. He begins to doubt the system and withdraws more and more. Not even his wife Corina manages to get through to him. Franz would love to disappear. But the secret service does not let him out of their clutches. Finally Franz is arrested and charged with treason...

WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT
(ALS HITLER DAS ROSA KANINCHEN STAHL)
Dir.: Caroline Link | 2018-19 | 119 min. Germany / Switzerland.

 Adaptation of the novel of the same name by Judith Kerr. Germany, 1933: Little Anna Kemper lives with her family in Berlin. Since her father, a famous theatre critic, is an open opponent of the National Socialists, he has to flee to Zurich after Hitler's seizure of power. The mother, Anna and her twelve-year-old brother soon follow him. Because there is hardly any time to prepare the escape, Anna has to leave her beloved plush rabbit behind. In Switzerland the family finds no permanent home and is forced to flee via Paris to London. Again and again Anna and her family have to adapt to the constantly changing circumstances, they are confronted with new challenges and especially with privations. Nevertheless, Anna tries not to lose her courage.

ALL ABOUT ME (DER JUNGE MUSS AN DIE FRISCHE LUFT)
| Dir.: Caroline Link | 2017-18 | Germany

Film adaptation of the autobiography of German entertainer Hape Kerkeling. The story begins in the Ruhr Valley of 1972: Hans-Peter is nine years old and a bit chubby, but full of self-confidence. The latter is not least due to his ability to make other people laugh, a talent that he trains on every occasion - be it in the grocer's shop of his grandmother Änne, with the customers as an audience, or at the various meetings with his party-prone relatives. But the idyllic family life takes a turn for the darker, when Hape's mother loses her sense of smell and taste as the result of a chronic sinus infection and starts struggling with depression. The father is helpless and doesn't know how to deal with his wife's mental illness. But for Hape, the sadness of his mother is an even greater incentive to act out his comedic side.

EXIT MARRAKECH  | Dir.: Caroline Link | 2012-13 | Germany

When 17-year-old Ben visits his father Heinrich in Marrakech, it is the start of an adventurous journey through a foreign country with a picturesque charm and a rough beauty where everything appears possible, including whether father and son will lose each other for good or find one another again.
Heinrich, a celebrated theater director, is taking part in an international festival in Morocco, but with father and son being unused to such proximity, all their old grievances and conflicts resurface, in addition to which, they both inflict new wounds on one another.
Whilst the two of them drift further and further apart, Ben opens himself up increasingly more to the foreign country and tries to find his own way in this unknown world, far from his father's luxury hotel. He falls in love with the young Karima, escapes with her to her distant home and encounters an archaic society in which the highest value is placed on family honor.
In "Exit Marrakech" the colorful life in the narrow streets, the picturesque charm of the oases, the rough beauty of the desert and the breathtaking Atlas Mountains are more than just a fascinating backdrop for a gripping and intense piece of cinema, they are also signposts on the protagonists' emotional maps.
 

Entry tickets -  please contact the festival office
Telephone:  044 28212652