Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films

She lives in a small town in central Germany; a 30-year-old single
woman who would be living alone if it weren’t for the ghosts of
the dear departed who keep her company and whom she knew
while they were alive or from tales told by her grandmother. If
she lived in another time, another culture, she would be revered
as a mystic. In a small town in Germany it’s more complicated.
Nina falls in love with Max, the husband of her best friend, Sibylle.
Despite both their efforts to the contrary, driven by her love, her
character and the ghosts, Nina eventually decides to begin an
affair. For Max it means betraying his wife, slipping from one lie to
another until his wife leaves him.
But living with Nina means living in her world, together with the
ghosts, creatures free of doubts and pain. They and Nina represent
forces far stronger than he is and, try as he might, he fails to
meet his own ideal of proving worthy to her. He flees back to the
world whose forces and circumstances he understands, that of
Sibylle and his children.
Nina’s suicide attempt fails and, in the hospital, she discovers that
she is pregnant. She now lives a soulless and empty existence,
surrounding herself with a protective wall through which no man,
no ghost, can penetrate. Until, that is, she sees the baby’s face
on the ultrascanner. At that moment, the ghosts return and Nina
lives again.
SK
Planet der
Kannibalen
Original Title Planet der Kannibalen Type of Project
Feature Genre Science fiction satire Production Company
Rotwang Film, Hamburg With backing from FilmFörderung
Hamburg, ARTE, Strasbourg, ZDF, Mainz Producers Patrick
Brandt, Hans-Christoph Blumenberg Director Hans-Christoph
Blumenberg Screenplay Hans-Christoph Blumenberg
Director of Photography Klaus Peter Weber Editor
Florentine Bruck Music by Nick Glowna Principal Cast
Minh-Khai Phan-Thi, Florian Lukas, Barbara Auer, Fatih Akin,
Vadim Glowna Format 35mm, b/w, 1:1.85 Shooting
Language German Shooting in Hamburg and surroundings
Contact:
Rotwang Film GmbH
Koppel 94 · D-20099 Hamburg
phone/fax +49-40-24 48 64
Joseph Orr (photo © Stefan Wachner)
in production
Back in the black and white 1950s, as if the threat of nuclear annihilation
and, worse yet, Communism, wasn’t enough, there were
also those pesky rampaging giant ants, rampaging giant spiders,
flying saucers landing in the desert, invasions of body snatchers,
Martians up to no good, creatures in black lagoons and all kinds of
things just itching to destroy mom, apple pie and, yes, civilization
as we know it!
Now the B-movie is back!
Planet der Kannibalen is Rotwang Film’s third production.
After Rotwang muss weg and the German Film Prize winning
Beim nächsten Kuss knall ich ihn nieder, comes a
black and white, low budget, science fiction satire.
Writer-director Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, having
finished the German reunification drama-documentary
Deutschlandspiel, decided to give his imagination free rein
and set out to revive the genre that, certainly in Germany, has
become neglected these past few years. But you only have to
think of Metropolis to realize that science fiction is part of
German filmmaking’s genetic heritage.
Planet der Kannibalen is set in the year 2020, in a Germany
where the European economic system has collapsed and a poverty
stricken country in the grip of an energy crisis is about to celebrate
thirty years’ reunification. Meanwhile, the two remaining
media giants, Alphaplus and Eurolux, are fighting to the death for,
what else?, ratings. Their weapons, ever more extreme game- and
talk shows.
Minh Khai plays Emma Trost, Alphaplus’ director for trend
management. Her mission is to find aliens in the city, lure them
onto a talk show and win the ratings war for once and all. Emma’s
cool as she knows there are no such things. Aren’t there? But just
as her boss is about to tell her where they’re hiding, he’s shot.
Emma, a murder suspect, is forced to flee through a night time city
of cannibals, criminals, tycoons and terrorists until she meets
media desperado Adam Singer. Together they set out to solve the
mystery of the aliens.
Shot in just 19 days on a budget of only DM 2.1 million, by using
deferments Rotwang’s owners, Blumenberg and Brandt,
have assembled a stellar cast. Not only TV presenter Minh Khai
and star actress Barbara Auer, but writer-director Fatih
Akin (Im Juli) also lends his talents.
SK
Minh-Khai Phan-Thi (photo © Baernd FRAATZ)
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