Goethe-Institut is organising the second edition of the annual German film festival, KinoFest, scheduled to run throughout September to November 2023. KinoFest is a joint production involving eight Goethe-Instituts in Southeast Asia, showcasing the latest films released from 2021 to 2023.
Director: Cem Kaya Duration: 102 mins Year: 2022 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Cem Kaya, a German director with Turkish roots, shows in his latest work how the waves of migration of Turkish citizens to Germany contribute to the development of Turkish pop music industry – quite remarkable – in both countries.
Director: Natalia Sinelnikova Duration: 93 mins Year: 2022 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Security officer Anna lives with her 16-year-old daughter in a remote high-rise on the edge of a forest. The building provides its occupants a haven until the caretaker's dog disappears and irrational fear spreads.
Director: Christoph Hochhäusler Duration: 123 mins Year: 2023 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - The undercover investigator Robert is supposed to gain the trust of a major drug dealer. To infiltrate, he is supposed to pretend to be the partner of the trans woman Leni, who was actually Robert’s ex-lover. Robert finds himself attracted and repelled by Leni’s roles at the same time.
Director: Lisa Bierwirth Duration: 125 mins Year: 2021 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - When a Frankfurt curator is unintentionally caught up in a police raid near a bar, she meets a Congolese businessman, and they begin a passionate affair.
Director: Diana El Jeiroudi Duration: 190 mins Year: 2021 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Republic of Silence bears witness to a tragedy on an epic scale, accompanied by an ever-expanding mosaic of fragile, deeply embedded moments from the director's life, beginning with the memory from she was young, right up to the present day.
Director: Annika Pinske Duration: 89 mins Year: 2022 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Clara made it: she paved her way from the provincial backwaters of East Germany into Berlin's academic scene. But upon returning home she is alienated from her family. The story of a woman caught in contradictions on her quest for independence.
Director: Florian Dietrich Duration: 96 mins Year: 2021 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - After his release from prison, Babtou is looking forward to a fresh start, enjoying his freedom and never dealing with German authorities again. However, he finds himself facing deportation when a spontaneous welcome home party goes awry.
Director: Roman Liubyi Duration: 96 mins Year: 2023 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Summer 2014 in eastern Ukraine, a multi-layered investigation into the downing of flight MH17, in which a butterfly-shaped shrapnel found in the pilot's body implicated the state responsible for a war crime that remains unpunished.
Director: Arne Büttner & Ole Jacobs Duration: 120 mins Year: 2021 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - In the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, a mother of two Nasim and her family time and again manage to deal impressively with the challenges of this unacceptable and extreme situation.
Director: Sophie Linnenbaum Duration: 120 mins Year: 2022 Subtitle: English
Synopsis - Paula is a simple Supporting Character, in a repressive three class-society, trying to prove that she deserves to be a Lead. Paula finds herself in the abyss of the cinematic world, on the fringes of the storyline and lost among the outtakes.
Director: Dieu Hao Do Duration: 94 mins Year: 2023 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - Director Dieu Hao Do examines the fragmentation of his family. The American War in Vietnam scattered them across three continents. Almost 50 years after their escape, contact between the seven siblings has all but broken off.
Director: Alexander Kluge Duration: 90 mins Year: 2018 Subtitles: English
Synopsis - For more than six decades, Alexander Kluge has been working away at cinematic reflection on what constitutes our media society. He strings together every conceivable type of image in his playful and subtle cinematic streams of consciousness, allows the abstract to collide with the concrete, the past with the future, and has now found a congenial sparring partner in the Filipino iconoclast Khavn De La Cruz.
