“Bizarre”, says producer Christian Becker on Thursday, the opening day of the 38th Munich Film Festival, in front of the Café Reitschule, to which the Bavarian film fund FFF has invited. On the one hand, of course, to finally be among people again, to meet actors, producers or directors and to exchange ideas about this absurd or bizarre time. But Becker is also just angry.
Hardly any other industry has fought its way through the pandemic better, he says. After all, film is not just about creative and exciting scripts or rousing performances. Everyday life is above all: dealing with suddenly new situations and requirements, on the budget or on set. And now an industry is to celebrate here that, from their point of view, is doing very well, but is being tampered with by the rule makers. Becker greets Martin Moszkowicz, the Constantin boss, director David Dietl walks past, they all report the same thing, Becker explains it with an example.
Christian Becker (dark jacket) with author Sebastian Fitzek on Sunday at the Amazon reception.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
“We took care of everything right from the start, for example disinfectants.” When there was none, they had some made at a gin distillery. The first mobile test stations went to film sets, where groups of people were “completely separated” and there was only packaged food. It was always shot, just not shown in the cinema. Moszkowicz puts it this way: “Production managers should have been used to fight infection.” Their job is to have a solution for every problem at every moment. Elbow check with Ilse Aigner, the politician’s envoy, who stipulates a distance of about 150 centimeters between two chairs in the cinema. “Some movie theaters are 147 apart,” says Moszkowicz. It does not work. And then always these other pictures, of football.
But Moszkowicz is also a filmmaker, and in any case you will only be admitted to this branch if you exude a high degree of optimism and confidence. “Cinema is coming back”, he says, “it is unrivaled”. Director Dietl comes straight from the editing room to the reception, he shot the series “Paradiso” for Sky, among other places in Northern Italy, Brazil and New York, so the best choice in Corona year 2020. It worked anyway, and now people are finally sitting again in the cinema. “In the meantime I was skeptical whether the cinema would survive,” says Dietl, “but it was even strengthened by this time.” After a year of streaming on small screens on the couch, you can now experience again what cinema does to you. “In a hall you can get involved, if you are taken along, if the concentration is higher, you are really drawn into a film world.” Is that correct?
On Thursday evening at the opening at least there will be cheers and applause, and the premiere of “Dear Thomas” about the writer Thomas Brasch on Friday is a good test for the pull of the cinema. The black and white film is shown in the open air in Westpark, a thoughtful, disturbing and stimulating film. Leading actor Albrecht Schuch sits on a wall before the premiere and looks at the small lake behind the screen and asks: “Will the film also work open air?”
While thousands of Italians lie in their arms a few kilometers away, sweating and without a mask, five people are allowed to walk on the little red carpet at the same time and wearing a mask, provided they have followed the correct walking routes. Schuch sees a sunset, nine ducks and a swan, next to him is Jella Haase, who became known as Chantal in the “Fack ju Göhte” films and is therefore adored by two girls that evening too.
Schuch, Haase and the film team have to line up for the photo. “But we’ve been tested,” protests Schuch wearily. He then just takes Haase in his arms, you can say you celebrated a goal by the Italians. Haase says: “I’m so happy that we can all immerse ourselves in strange worlds together again.” For example that of the writer Brasch in the GDR. And then you emerge with the realization of how important it is to “remain uncomfortable and, in the best sense of the word, a disruptive spirit that questions the world”. An easy entry would be the Corona world.
Maria Furtwängler or Fack-ju colleague Max von der Groeben make themselves comfortable in garden chairs, Haase fetches popcorn, the film starts with the unplanned additional sound of birds chirping and partying on an adjacent meadow, but the suction simply sucks away the disruptive elements. Brasch writes: “I want to stay where I’ve never been”, that could also be a nice way of describing the ability of film. When Schuch, alias Brasch, said to his father: “The world doesn’t change if you are satisfied”, birds and celebrants have long been forgotten.
Jella Haase and Albrecht Schuch in the Westpark.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
This film festival with its open-air premieres and canceled receptions is not glamorous, but it is also about other things. Meet again, for example, like on Saturday evening in the Hofbräu beer garden on Wiener Platz. Actor Francis Fulton-Smith stands there and toasts with a Ruinart rosé. Champagne! Nudge! When was that last? While the first weekend is usually overflowing in front of tingling glass flutes, at dozens of receptions, the performer stands in front of only three tables. They mingle again, caster Franziska Aigner, Hofbräu boss Michael Möller or the boss of Bavaria-Film. The actors in particular really enjoy meeting each other again.
Fulton-Smith shoots for the film and also knows the theater stage, the difference is something like a live meeting and a zoom meeting. “Zoom is great,” he says, “but so much is lost, for example literally perceiving the eye-gaze, it can only be done live.”
The real meeting is also essential for Casterin Aigner. She has the feeling that a little more light and humorous fabrics are in demand. Since everything is also translated into series, whether it is the new Pumuckl episodes that will soon be shot by Marcus H. Rosenmüller for RTL or the Sisi that Aigner is re-casting. Jannik Schümann “plays Franzl in the greatest love comedy in the world and has just come out,” she says, “that’s modern.” And Sisi will be a new discovery, Dominique Devenport.
New faces for big roles, that seems to be a trend too. Aigner has to go, the premiere of “The girl with the golden hands” in the cinema at the Olympiasee. Here there are only two ducks that watch the director Katharina Marie Schubert and leading actress Corinna Harfouch pose for the photographers. Here too: no glamor, but lots of closeness and affection. Schubert introduces her two brothers to Harfouch and ponders how this story about a woman and her family seems to have been torn between East and West ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, before they sink into their beach chairs and hope that people will like the film and it’s not raining. Both succeed.
Marie Schubert (right) and Corinna Harfouch in the cinema at the Olympiasee.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
On Sunday morning, producer Christian Becker will be in the Hofbräukeller beer garden at the Amazon reception next to Germany boss Philip Pratt and bestselling author Sebastian Fitzek. Fitzek’s book debut will be filmed as a series, and later he also wrote a pandemic thriller. His impression is that disaster films are particularly in demand during this catastrophe. “Maybe because people want to see the happy ending?” Pratt says: “There is an incredible diversity emerging, to which we also contribute.” Amazon wants to invest in German films and has, among other things, produced series for this purpose, individual episodes of which have a budget of several million euros. “We’re desperately looking for people, in front of and behind the camera.” You like to hear that at the film festival.
The kind of optimism that prevails at the moment, says Pratt, has never been seen in the past 20 years. And producer Becker, who attended various events in the first few days, says: “The mood is simply very liberated, really relaxed.”