Film screening
A Gift from the Gods

02/24/17
6:30pm
Goethe-Institut New York

The actress Anna suddenly loses her position at a small German municipal theater. She can expect little help from the local job center –except for a not particularly militant official who works there and is crazy about the theater. Anna takes on the leadership of a drama course for eight long-term unemployed people. At the beginning, none of them respond with any enthusiasm, especially not for the drama play ‘Antigone’, which Anna wants to rehearse with them –yet the skeptical and difficult individuals grow together into a community, which provides them all with a source of hope. A GIFT FROM THE GODS is a tragicomedy where the stage becomes a showcase for a collective reclaiming of individually lost self-respect.

Director: Oliver Haffner, Germany, 2012-2014