GOETHEFEST 2024 • Sunday, October 13th
19:00
Beyond the Blue Border / Jenseits der blauen Grenze
Germany, 2023, 102’
Director: Sarah Neumann
Cast: Lena Urzendowsky, Willi Geitmann, Jannis Veihelmann…
GDR, August 1989: Hanna and Andreas became a target of the secret police and had to give up their plans for their future studies and desired professions. Instead, they face arbitrariness, mistrust and reprisals. Their only chance for a self-determined life lies in fleeing across the Baltic Sea. Fifty kilometres of water separate them from freedom – and only a thin connecting rope around their wrists saves them from absolute loneliness.
21:00
In the Blind Spot / Im toten Winkel
Germany, 2023, 118’
Director: Ayşe Polat
Cast: Katja Bürkle, Ahmet Varlı, Çağla Yurga, Aybi Era, Maximilian Hemmersdorfer, Nihan Okutucu, Tudan Ürper, Mutallip Müjdeci, Rıza Akın, Aziz Çapkurt…
A German documentary film project in north-eastern Turkey. Simone wants to learn more about Hatice, whose son was abducted a quarter of a century ago. Storytelling to prevent forgetting, rituals to contest disappearance. The lives of the Kurdish people – lives lived in a blind spot – are characterised by violence and resistance to an uncertain existence. Strange incidents soon overshadow the filming as well: turning up alongside interpreter Leyla and directly in front of the camera is the neighbour’s little daughter Melek, with her pretty purple dress and a mysterious gaze that goes right through you. What follows is a subtly framed, coldly brutal political thriller told in three chapters and from multiple perspectives. For it is not only the strategies of sinister organisations and the logic of paranoia that is the focus of this clever and complex cinematic conundrum, but the act of seeing itself – in all its dimensions, from observation to prophecy. The blind spot is in fact trauma, of the transgenerational kind. German-Kurdish director, screenwriter and producer Ayşe Polat stages it to perfection.
