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RELEASES Germany

Line-up spotlights debut films

by 

Among the seven new releases to have hit screens yesterday are four European titles, including two German productions and one co-production.

NFP has launched young Swiss-born director Baran bo Odar’s debut feature The Silence [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. It follows his multiple award-winning short Quietsch and some equally lauded adverts.

This thriller, based on Jan Costin Wagner’s best-seller, is set in a delightful little provincial town where the unexpected murder of a little girl, in the same circumstances as another murdered child over 20 years ago, revives painful memories.

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The police officers leading the investigation are played by Sebastian Blomberg (The Baader Meinhof Complex [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
) and Burghart Klaußner (The White Ribbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile
]
). The cast also includes Katrin Saß, Karoline Eichhorn, Ulrich Thomsen and Charly Hübner.

The Silence [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is co-produced by Berlin-based cine plus and Munich’s Lüthje & Schneider.

AV Visionen has launched another debut work, Distance [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, written and directed by Thomas Sieben. The film, produced by Grand Hôtel Pictures, was presented in the German section at last year’s Berlinale.

It tells the story of a gardener, Daniel, whose psychopathic behaviour threatens the love affair he wants to have with Jana, played by Viennese actress Franziska Weisz (The Robber [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benjamin Heisenberg
film profile
]
).

Måns Herngren’s The Swimsuit Issue [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, co-produced by Zentropa Berlin and Stockholm’s Fladen Film, centres on an unemployed father stuck in a midlife crisis. Meanwhile, his wife has gone to London to pursue her career, leaving their teenage daughter with him, and the future of his hockey team is uncertain.

The film recounts his attempt to put together the century’s first male synchronised swimming team, despite the fact its members know nothing about this activity. The Swimsuit Issue is distributed by Pandora.

Finally, Kinowelt is releasing Thomas Balmes’s eloquently-titled French documentary Babies, based on an idea by Alain Chabat.

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(Translated from French)

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