Co-presented with Telescope Film

KINO! Film Salon is a monthly online club to discuss films from Germany.

How it works: Each month, we choose a German film currently available to stream on U.S. platforms, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German cinema.

In our September session, we’ll discuss Western, the 2017 film by this year’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Valeska Grisebach. The discussion will be preceded by a pre-recorded introduction by Grisebach.

Soft-spoken Meinhard is part of a team of German workers building a hydroelectric plant in rural Bulgaria. Far from home and isolated on the construction site, his coworkers’ embrace of lawlessness leads them into conflict with the local villagers, harassing women and waving the German flag. Meanwhile, Meinhard finds himself drawing closer to his new neighbors, despite the barriers of language and communication. A triangle of suspicion opens, forcing Meinhard, the Bulgarian villagers, and the German workers to face the limits of their mutual understanding.

“Western adopts some familiar genre tropes to tell a story that feels classically styled, yet riven with modern anxieties and themes,” writes KINO! Film Salon host Jim Kolmar. “fAs the protagonists examine their own internalized prejudice while simply trying to earn a living, the film becomes a crucible for cultural tensions and conflict that seem to be just as present in 2026 as they did nearly a decade ago.”

Western world premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It was an official selection of several major international film festivals that year, including the Venice Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. It was awarded Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Actor (for Meinhard Neumann) at the 2018 German Film Critics Association Awards.

Hosted by Jim Kolmar

Jim programs for SXSW and Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU). He has participated in numerous international festival juries, panels, and committees.

KINO!Film Salon is a production ofTelescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.

Western
Dir. Valeska Grisebach
Germany/Austria/Bulgaria, 2017
121 min.
With Meinhard Neumann, Reinhardt Wetrek, Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, Veneta Frangova, Vyara Borisova