The endless (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
	Actors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 09.09.2018, Cinema am Ostertor, Weird Xperience, English with German subtitle
Synopsis: This mind-bending thriller follows two brothers who receive a cryptic video message inspiring them to revisit the UFO death cult they escaped a decade earlier. Hoping to find the closure that they couldn't as young men, they're forced to reconsider the cult's beliefs when confronted with unexplainable phenomena surrounding the camp. As the members prepare for the coming of a mysterious event, the brothers race to unravel the seemingly impossible truth before their lives become permanently entangled with the cult.
Review: The plot and the beginning of the story looks like a strong connotation for the Scientology or the Order of the Solar Temple or any narrow-minded, dangerous and self-destructive sect. Slowly this becomes more mysterious by suggesting the idea of personal time loop, of space-time wormhole, of multiple Moons. Then I realised that the movie was about the search for one self. Both having drastically different views in life and confront then rationality and irrationality, open-mindedness and narrow-mindedness. And that the success of the search for their own identity is based on their ability to accept being separated from their brother, to accept to get rid of some rules.  The complexity of the story with many loops, with many things running in parallel views or parallel worlds, is very digestible because the focus is always kept on the two brothers. Therefore the acting efforts look minor for the crew and huge for the two authors. I believe everyone on set had a strange time and a good time.  I loved the photography because it has a kind of documentary style but is actually extremely thought in order to make the optical effects and the surprise effects possible.  The performance of both Justing Benson and Aaron Moorhead on this movie is amazing. Writing, directing, producing, acting. And for me all of this with a great quality and talent. I am even more curious to watch the other movies of these promising talents.
Rating: 8 /10

Gundermann (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Andreas Dresen
	Actors: Alexander Scheer, Anna Unterberger
	Country: D
	Genre: Drama, Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 06.09.2018, Schauburg, German version
Synopsis: The East German singer and writer Gerhard Gundermann (Scheer) struggles with his passion for music, his life engagement as a coal miner, his love for Conny (Unterberger) and his dealings with the secret police of the German Democratic Republic, the STASI.
Review: I found the plot interesting. The inner conflict between wish and expression of real socialism and handling with Sovietism. Living in Germany and often confronted to people mixing socialism and Sovietism, to people full of prejudices with regard to East Germans, I definitely wanted to watch this movie. I heard about this singer only shortly before the movie got released because some East German friends mentioned it. Following Gundermann and his protests against the Soviet regime established in GDR shows strikingly what really makes the difference between the socialism, full of solidarity and humanism and care for the weaker and the Sovietism, full of suspicion and greed for power and lacking humanity. Like in Walesa, the main protagonist signs an agreement with the authorities because these aimed to damp them, but their personality remained the same and this speaks for Walesa and for Gundermann. The story may be a bit slow, but I believe this served my understanding of the mindset and the profound thoughts of the characters. On top of it, the acting itself was matching perfectly the characters. Alexander Scheer as man protesting for his people. Anna Unterberger as muse and balancing element for the Gundermann. They look very authentic.  The photography of the industrial and deserted landscape of the surface coal mining (in German Tagebau) in the Lausitz region, East of Germany, are amazing. It is actually a massive destruction of the environment and every now and then the news report of a village or a forest that will be destroyed in favour of such a surface mining in Germany. This has nevertheless a visual beauty.
Rating: 8 /10

Werk ohne Autor (2018)

	Also Known As: Never look away, Opera senza autore
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
	Actors: Sebastian Koch, Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl
	Country: D, I
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 06.10.2018, Schauburg, German version
Synopsis: As a kid, Kurt Barnert (Schilling), witnessed the kidnapping of his aunt Elisabeth by a group of Nazi doctors. Doctor Carl Seeband (Koch) let her then disappear for sake of pure race. In East Germany he starts studying arts. When he meets the student Ellie (Beer), he is convinced that he has met the love of his life. Once in the West, both move to Düsseldorf. And Kurt begins to create paintings that touch his generation and are actually a mirror of his traumas.
Review: I have to tell that the movie is about 3 hours. And that I did not notice that during the movie. The story has several levels of understanding: the fate of two families within German History; the thought about art definition; the emancipation of an artist with regard to his major financial support; the emancipation of a woman with regard to her parents; the hidden Nazi confronted to his past. One of the major plus of the movie is that the plot looks at both sides of Germany after WWII.  Each story is dealt with a lot of thoughts and depth and still tense and suspenseful. This is so seldom in movies and this is exactly what I like and what I am looking for in movies. The acting is amazing. Sebastian Koch is always great when he is working with Henckel von Donnersmarck like in Das Leben der anderen. Tom Schilling as shy lonely artist, Paula Beer as submitted daughter, both as authentic lovers believing in each other. They are all excellent. And I believe it is not only that they are good but that the director is amazing with them.  The handling of the camera and the photography is clean and well thought. Just thinking about the obvious connotation of the blurred view of the child loosing his aunt and the paintings à la Gerhard Richter. But also the optical effects in the atelier in Düsseldorf and the common atelier for posing social realism students in Dresden.  For the fans of contemporary artists, this is full of allusions to Beuys and Richter. For the historians, this gives an overview on West and East Germany situations after WWII. For historian philosophers, this throws the ideas of collaboration, of redemption, of justice, of support to murders, of eugenism through emotions.
Rating: 9 /10

Nina (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Maria Winther Olsen
	Actors: Marie Tourell Søderberg, Nikolaj Dencker Schmidt
	Country: DK
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 31.10.2018, CineStar5, NFDL2018, Danish with English subtitle
Synopsis: When the pregnant, aspiring author Nina (Søderberg) moves to a remote island with her boyfriend William (Schmidt), she soon finds herself isolated and lonely due to Williams heavy workload as a doctor. A chance encounter with the village priest, as well as the local myth about the mysterious 'Seal Woman', further complicate Nina's already troubled mind.
Review: The story is set in a village that is really isolated. You need a ferry to make anything and most of the villagers and William do so. It is set in a house that looks really isolated and abandoned. The cellar is an old workshop and looks abandoned since decades. The story is rhythmed by different steps, which may be real or her dream or her thoughts, bringing Nina in more isolation, more unspoken tensions with other villagers, with her boyfriend. The logic is very confusing and some scenes seem to be inconsistent, in which a character act or say something as in the reality and then as in her thoughts. This is very confusing.  The acting of Søderberg is brilliant as confused woman and then at the edge of nervous breakdown. It changes from her rather straight-forward secondary role in Itsi Bitsi. This actress is developing very well.  The nature of the Island Faeroe is one major presence in the movie. This is the major reason why Nina feels isolated. And every time we see outside scenes, it is either Nina with the drying clothes or Nina facing mountains or facing the creek to the Atlantic ocean. The complete landscape looks like a wall, a huge barrier and this enhances greatly the plot.
Rating: 4 /10

Vasara (2018)

	Also Known As: Summer survivors
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Marija Kavtaradzė
	Actors: Indrė Patkauskaitė, Paulius Markevičius, Gelminė Glemžaitė
	Country: LT
	Genre: Drama, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 31.10.2018, Kolosseum, Lithuanian with English subtitle
Synopsis: The psychology-student Indre (Patkauskaite) forces to get one job in a clinic. First she is ordered to take two young patients - Paulius (Markevicius) and Juste (Glemzaite) - to a psychiatric hospital in a seaside town. Paulius suffers from bipolar disorder and his mood is shifting, Juste is being treated after a suicide attempt, but she refuses to admit she needs help. Travelling together makes them closer to each other. Especially because Indre has difficulties communicating with people.
Review: The pitch sounds very good. The story and the characters are very shortly introduced before their journey starts. And then it is rather a series of episodes with something funny or weird. I liked these episodes a lot, as stand alone. But I did not find a good common theme that we follow along the movie. The central part seems to me very long as if the trip through Lithuania would takes weeks for a small country and especially for a task supposed to be short for the day.  The way the three characters act and play together at the beginning is very surprising. The directing of actors and the acting is good so that the dialogues could be understood by just listening to the voices (I don't get any word in Lithuanian!). This might be the reason why I would have liked to get more from the characters in the thesis and synthesis parts of the story.
Rating: 4 /10

Føniks (2018)

	Also Known As: Phoenix
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Camilla Strøm Henriksen
	Actors: Ylva Bjørkaas Thedin, Maria Bonnevie, Sverrir Gudnason, Casper Falck-Løvås
	Country: N
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 31.10.2018, Kolosseum, NFDL2018, Norvegian with English subtitle
Synopsis: From a young age, Jill (Thedin) has acted as the responsible adult in her small family. She cares for her loving but mentally unstable mother Astrid (Bonnevie) and her younger brother Bo (Falck-Løvås). The news that their estranged father Nils (Gudnason) will be visiting on Jill's birthday gives the children much needed hope. After a tragedy, Jill keeps it a secret in front of both family and outer world.
Review: The plot is not new but the tragedy and the ways for Jill to keep it secret are original. A further originality lies in the small monster looking lie a rat or a mop that is the avatar of her latent and quiet bad conscience. I see the story more on the handling of the tragedy by Jill than on the fact that she has to take responsibility for her mother and brother. The story is well built, the rhythm being given by the tragedy, the Jill's father concert. What surprises me is the relationship of Jill and Bo. Jill acting like a parent and Bo never answering nor contesting. This lacks of credibility to me, but might be a cultural difference. The Brazil story of the father is just one sentence in the middle of the movie that was OK and did not need any justification SPOILER while the father makes a big story out of it at the end of the movie.  The movie is moving and actually opens many other potential stories, such as the melodramatic story of the mother or the rise and fall of Astrid and Nils love story. To me a kind of modern Emile Zola novel on screen.
Rating: 6 /10