Silver-Screen Fridays @ Goethe-Institut Chennai!

Enjoy German Blockbusters on Second Fridays every Month!
We cordially invite you for the Silver-Screen Fridays @ Goethe-Institut Chennai!

Enjoy German Blockbusters on Second Fridays every Month starting from April until September 2023, 6.30 pm  at Goethe-Institut Auditorium.

A film evening  with excellent audiovisual quality will be the best German Cinema experience you can gift yourselves with.

Film schedule:


@Goethe-Institut Chennai 21.04.2023, 6.30 pm 
Transit
Dir.: Christian Petzold | 2017-18  | 102 min.


The German troops are just outside Paris. Georg escapes to Marseille at the last moment. His luggage contains the legacy of a writer named Weidel, who took his own life out of fear of persecution. This legacy comprises a manuscript, some letters and the Mexican Embassy’s assurance of a visa. Only those who can prove that they will leave are allowed in this port town, and this means you need an entry permit from a potential host country. Assuming the identity of Weidel, Georg tries to obtain one of the few scarce passages on a ship. Talks between refugees take place in the corridors of his small hotel, the waiting rooms of consulates, and the cafés and bars down at the harbour. Georg befriends Driss, the son of his late comrade Heinz, who died whilst trying to flee. But when he meets the mysterious Marie, his plans change.

"Transit" is based on Anna Seghers' eponymous novel which she wrote in exile. The film is set in contemporary Marseille where these characters from the past move around. And so, refugees from back then meet refugees from today, history meets the present, and all of their stories combine to create one eternal transit space.

@Goethe-Institut Chennai 12.05.2023, 6.30 pm 
Oray
Dir.: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay  | 2017-2019  | 100 min.

In an argument with his wife Burcu, Oray pronounces the Islamic word for separation, "talaq". The Imam informs him of the consequences: Oray must now part from Burcu for three months. Oray uses the enforced break in their relationship to make a fresh start and moves to Cologne. Here, he finds a job at a flea market and seeks out a new Muslim religious community, led by the young Imam Bilal. Soon, Oray begins preaching himself; he is especially popular with the younger members of the congregation, and this makes Bilal jealous. When Burcu pays her husband a surprise visit, they realise that the break has done them good and they still love each other. Oray asks Bilal for advice. But the latter advocates a stricter interpretation of Islamic law than the imam in Oray’s community back home: pronouncing "talaq" he says, does not mean a break, but a divorce.

Director Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay employs a quasi-documentary style to tell the story of an individual exhausting himself as he works his way through a religion’s complex belief system and his search for fulfilment as a human caught between his belief in love and his love for his faith.

@Goethe-Institut Chennai 09.06.2023, 6.30 pm
The Trouble with being born
Dir.: Sandra Wollner  | 2019-2020  | 
94 min.

Somewhere in Central Europe, perhaps in the vicinity of Vienna, in the near future. Ten-year-old Elli is an android, as we soon learn. She takes shape through programming and this turns her into a fantasy figure. Firstly for a man she calls "Daddy" with whom she lies by the pool and for whom she dresses up in the house at the edge of the forest. Elli is the vessel for his memories, which mean nothing to her, but everything to him. One day he runs after a strange echo and gets lost in the darkness while Elli, who follows him, is picked up by strangers. A new identity awaits her, a new ghostly existence – as a blank screen onto which others can project their loss of the paradise that is childhood.

Austria’s new voice for the nexus between desire and the abyss, fear and mystery, feeling and emptiness is Sandra Wollner. As in "Das unmögliche Bild", in her provocative second feature film she develops the plot from a complex basic constellation (not the other way around) and reconstructs families that never existed. And so the machine becomes a mirror of human emotion, and the film a captivating ladder into virtual and psychological realities.

@Goethe-Institut Chennai 14.07.2023, 6.30 pm 
Night Life
Dir.: Simon Verhoeven | 2019-2020 | 115  min.

In the hustle and bustle of Berlin's nightlife, bartender Milo meets smart Sunny - and is convinced that he has found the woman of his dreams. Sunny also likes the charming man behind the bar and the two decide to go on a date. However, the romantic evening takes an unexpected turn when Milo's chaotic friend Renzo appears. Before they know it, their rendez-vous becomes a completely crazy and not entirely harmless hunt through Berlin's nightlife, with an uncertain outcome...


@Goethe-Institut Chennai 11.08.2023, 6.30 pm 
Exile
Dir.: Visar Morina  |  2018-2020  | 121 min.

First, there’s a dead rat hanging on the door of the house where Xhafer lives with his wife and children. Then the emails he sends are 'accidentally' no longer being received. The signs that this pharmaceutical engineer is being bullied and harassed in his workplace are increasing. Even if neither his wife nor his colleagues seem to believe him, this man, who is originally from Kosovo but who has been well integrated for years, feels more and more outcast from his (German) community. Or is he losing touch with reality?

In his second feature-length film, director Visar Morina dissects the psychological effects of social exclusion and presents them here as an interplay between belonging and alienation. Morina combines subtle images that gradually shift according to his protagonist’s state with meticulous performances from his ensemble, to describe the importance of personality when it comes to integrating into another society, and how quickly cracks can develop in the supposedly firm construct that is identity.

@Goethe-Institut Chennai 08.09.2023, 6.30 pm 
The Goldfish
Dir.: Alireza Golafshan  | 2018-2019  | 112 min.

A fund manager who has recently become a paraplegic uses an unsuspecting group of physically challenged people as cover to smuggle his illegal earnings across the Swiss border. In the process, he learns that there is more to life than money and finds happiness at a moment when he least expects it.