Finsterworld is set in a Germany that has seemingly been plucked out of time. A land where the sun always shines, children wear school uniforms, policemen dress up as bears and pedicurists make biscuits for old ladies. However, an abyss lurks beneath this beautiful facade – and the film goes on a journey to its depths.
This “Heimatfilm” (a sentimental film with regional background) portrays an equally enchanted and disenchanting world, and was one of the most exciting German feature film debuts of 2013. It is based on a screenplay by Christian Kracht, whose first novel was entitled Faserland (1995), a word that always seemed to be challenging its readers to pronounce it with a lisped “s” (i.e. the German pronunciation of the “th” sound), thus surreptitiously transforming the title into “Fatherland”. Finsterworld may tie in neatly with Faserland, but the protagonists in Kracht’s novel ponder the aesthetic disaster that has befallen Germany at great length, whereas Finsterworld is more a delicate, cautious declaration of hate for Germany.
In five narrative strands, presented in the whimsically inviting guise of a light-hearted character comedy, the film explores the uncharted territory between innocence and perversion, kindness and barbarity, triviality and pathos, and does so with great aplomb: a sixth-form trip to a former concentration camp led by dedicated teacher Nickel, the relationship problems of a policeman and a frustrated documentary filmmaker, the romance between a pedicurist and a woman in a retirement home, the tale of a hermit living in a forest, who is rearing a baby raven, and the car journey of a wealthy and rather snobby couple in their mid-fifties, whose son is on the school trip mentioned above (his grandmother is also the lady in the retirement home). Even the light is perfectly adjusted to each of these episodes – sometimes it has a matt, flat finish as it falls onto the leather cushions of a limousine, sometimes it glistens over a blooming field of rapeseed, and other times it takes on a dusty-retro quality as it shines through the tattered curtains in the retirement home when the pedicurist declares his love for his client.
The Director
Frauke Finsterwalder was born in 1975 in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. After studying literary studies and history in Berlin, she worked at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater and the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and subsequently became an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung. She went on to study documentary film directing at the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich. She now lives with her family in East Africa. Finsterworld is her first feature film.
German Movie Nights
On a Friday of every month, the Goethe-Institut presents recent German films, all screened with English subtitles.
