About

  The German Film Office is pleased to announce the second edition of its KINO! Germany Now! film program. From April through June 2023, theaters across the United States are invited to present a curated selection of new films from Germany. The program includes five striking examples of the dazzling talent that continues to emerge from one of the world’s great cinematic traditions. Curated by film programmer Jim Kolmar, these titles are idiosyncratic, visionary, and inventive, striking a balance between the accessible and the conceptually challenging. In most cases, the films take unconventional relationships and human interactions as their starting point. Or perhaps these are not so unconventional at all. Instead, they are reflections of the familiar social and emotional threads that connect us all, if we care to stop and look.

In that spirit, Nicolette Krebitz returns with her latest film, AEIOU: A Quick Alphabet of Love, a daring, life-affirming exploration of a complex relationship between an aging actress and her student, asking some difficult questions along the way. 

Jöns Jönsson’s Axiom is a curious study of an enigmatic, searching young man who would not be out of place in a Patricia Highsmith novel. Eliding obvious narrative routes, the film grips like a thriller and has a knack for conveying discomfort. 

Kiss My Wounds, a second feature from Hanna Doose, investigates dark family secrets at a Black Forest reunion. Offering a unique spin on the classic chamber drama, the film is another example of subverted expectation, never quite unfurling the way one might expect.

Vera Brückner’s Sorry Comrade is an eccentric documentary, a story of unconventional romance across political barriers and through time. Though steeped in social and historical commentary, the film is fundamentally about love.

Rounding out the selection, Sophie Linnenbaum’s canny exercise in offbeat sci-fi, The Ordinaries, employs the daring conceit of a future society rooted in a caste system and the deep wounds it leaves in human interaction. Despite a surprising sense of humor and an air of wry fable, this is a film with a dark, provocative heart.

All films are preceded by a short film:

AEIOU: A Quick Alphabet of Love by Jan Soldat’s Staging Death
Axiom by Alison Kuhn’s Fluffy Tales
Kiss My Wounds by Frédéric Jaeger’s The Deluge
Sorry Comrade by Jonas Riemer’s The One Who Crossed the Sea
The Ordinaries by Jonatan Schwenk’s Zoon

KINO! Germany Now! introduces up-and-coming and mid-career directors from Germany, each with their own filmmaking background and unique approach to their craft. It’s a real pleasure to watch their talent on display in our films.

Jim Kolmar Jim Kolmar is an independent curator, and has programmed for South by Southwest Film Festival since 2008. He also programs for Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU). Jim was a guest curator for Portland International Film Festival 2021.
 
Jim has consulted and participated on numerous international festival juries, panels and committees including Adelaide Film Festival, Berlinale, Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM), FICCALI, and Ventana Sur. For the last two years he has also mentored students for London Film School.


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