The screening of
Limbo will take place in the presence of the director, Anna Sofia Hartmann, who will participate in an onstage discussion. Anna Sofie Hartmann will be in Seattle to install her photo exhibition
I wish I could tell you how I feel, opening at the Goethe Pop Up in Chophouse Row during the Capitol Hill Art Walk on
March 10.
The film screening is presented in partnership with Northwest Film Forum, the University of Washington Department of German Studies, and the UW Department of Scandinavian Studies. All ticket purchases support
Northwest Film Forum. The screening of
Limbo will take place in
person only. Please register in advance and pay what you can.
About the Film:
Limbo
Dir. Anna Sofie Hartmann
Germany, Denmark | 2021 | 80 minutes
Danish with English subtitles
Synopsis: In the Danish town of Nakskov, surrounded by industry, industrialized agriculture, and a working harbor, high school students live in dorms and eat kebab, drink beer, and flirt while decoding what their lives will look like—and, just as important, learn from media and society what it is to be men and women. In this liminal place, a young woman with a mysterious smile, Sara (Annika Nuka Mathiassen), forms a fascination with unconventional drama teacher Karen (Sofia Nolso), and this fascination grows into something richer and stranger—a longing for connection, perhaps, or love.
Description: In the beginning, we see faces—real skin, real smiles, bright, uncertain eyes. Moving around a fluorescent-lighted room, they speak, trading lines from Sophocles’
Antigone, the ancient tragedy of a “frail girl emerging” who tiptoes through a no man’s land and dooms herself out of duty. We are there, in the terrible, electrifying intimacy of high school drama, in the Danish town of Nakskov, surrounded by industry, industrialized agriculture, and a working harbor. These high school students live in dorms and eat kebab, drink beer, and flirt while decoding what their lives will look like—and, just as important, learn from media and society what it is to be men and women. In this liminal place, a young woman with a mysterious smile, Sara (Annika Nuka Mathiassen), forms a fascination with unconventional drama teacher Karen (Sofia Nolso), and this fascination grows into something richer and stranger—a longing for connection, perhaps, or love.
Anything but a conventional coming-of-age story or queer romance, writer-director Anna Sofie Hartmann’s debut feature is more interested in imparting the experience of places, groups, and institutions—sights, sounds, haptics, the texture of life—than with genre tropes. Through careful, steady photographic composition and rich, sometimes strange soundscapes, we are drawn into the poetry of tumbling rocks at a construction site, the boiling of sugar at a factory, the slow passage of a tilled and dull land as seen from a moving train. The film’s aestheticization of the lives and events it depicts is immersive, not decorative. And when Limbo’s characters find and lose the way towards each other, themselves, and a meaningful future, the effect is all the more shocking for being so grounded in place. (Martin Schwartz)
Registration
Press:
“The reliably productive San Sebastian section entitled and dedicated to ‘New Directors’ has unearthed yet another
promising talent in the form of Denmark’s Anna Sofie Hartmann, whose Berlin film-school project
Limbo transcends its blandly generic title and
amply justifies its presence at a major European festival.”
The Hollywood Reporter, Neil Young
“…[Q]uite
an original film in the sense of both form and approach. A real
low-key slow burner, it leaves the viewer with more of a
profound than a strong, sudden impression, building up after the film, rather than during the viewing experience itself.”
Cineuropa, Vladan Petkovic
© Anna Sofie Hartmann
About the Filmmaker:
Born in 1984, ASH grew up in Nakskov, Denmark. A graduate of the German Film und Television Academy Berlin, her first feature film
Limbo 2014) premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and subsequently showed at among others the IFF Rotterdam, SXSW and Copenhagen PIX, before being nominated for a European Discovery Award at the 2015 European Film Awards. Her second feature
Giraffe (2019), produced by Komplizen Film and co-produced by Profile Pictures, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and showed at among others San Sebastian IFF, Mar del Plata IFF, Thessaloniki IFF, CPH PIX and the Viennale, where it received the FIPRESCI prize. She is the recipient of grants from Nordisk Film Fondet, Lolland Kommunes Kunstlegat, the German National Academic Foundation, The Arts Council of Denmark and the Villa Aurora. She lives in Berlin.
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