Tore dances

Movie
Original title	Tore dances
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	2013
length	110 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Katrin Gebbe
script	Katrin Gebbe
production	Verena Gräfe-Höft
music	Johannes Lehniger , ; Peter Folk
camera	Moritz Schultheiss
cut	Heike Gnida
occupation
	Julius Feldmeier : Goals; Sascha Alexander Geršak : Benno Pohl; Annika Kuhl : Astrid; Gro Swantje Kohlhof : Sanny; Til Niklas Theinert : Dennis; Daniel Michel : Owl; Nadine Boske : Cora; Laura Lo Zito : Lilli; Enno Hesse : Jasper; Uwe Dag Berlin : Dieter; Christian Bergmann : Klaus;

Tore tanzt is a German feature film from 2013. Director Katrin Gebbe 's feature film debut celebrated its world premiere on May 23, 2013 in the Un Certain Regard section of the 66th Cannes International Film Festival . The international title is Nothing Bad Can Happen .

action

Tore, a person with epileptic seizures and no recognizable family or friends, gets to know God with the Jesus Freaks . He is baptized in the Elbe and wants to follow God consistently, as he experiences in the meetings and services of the Jesus Freak Congregation. Therefore Tore is convinced that God can work in a way that very few people suspect.

At a rest area Tore notices a pick-up that does not start. Together with his friend Owl, with whom he lives in the Jesus Freak Commune , he leans over the bonnet and says a prayer with which he asks God to start the car. In fact, the chariot starts after the prayer. Benno, the driver and father of the family who were sitting in the pickup, takes note of this in disbelief and astonishment. He offers Tore a place to live and food in his allotment garden house .

Tore falls out with his friend Owl because he caught him playing foreplay with his girlfriend Maithe. For Tore, premarital sex is against God's will, and so he spontaneously moves out of the commune. Tore finds the promised home with Benno and his partner Astrid with their children Sanny and Dennis.

Soon the Jesus freak gets to know Benno's choleric side; because he lives out his sadistic inclinations more and more at gates. For gates, these are God's tests, which he sees connected with a task for him. Tore endures Benno's sadistic excesses by opposing him with his gentleness and non-violence , which he had learned from the Jesus Freaks. This opposition is reinforced by his falling in love with Sanny, as Tore feels responsible for her. So despite a successful escape, he returns to this hell twice.

The violence against Tore continues to escalate until he is finally tortured and mutilated by Benno, together with Astrid and their friends, Cora and Klaus, so much that he dies from it. Tore holds on to his belief in a benevolent God until the end, much to Benno's annoyance. These last, ultimately fatal tortures give Sanny the strength to leave the violent parental home with her brother Dennis.

History of origin

Film director Katrin Gebbe at the screening of Tore tanzt in her birthplace Ibbenbüren on February 26, 2014

Substance development

The director Katrin Gebbe also wrote the script, with advice from Matthias Glasner . Gebbe was based on a criminal case that occurred in Udenhausen in 2002 and 2003 . There a couple held a mentally handicapped boy like a slave, tormented, and finally murdered him.

In an interview at the Melbourne Film Festival, Katrin Gebbe said:

“I found an internet article and couldn't stop thinking about the maltreated boy, a good person who meets the wrong friends… The characters deeply touched me. Why was that boy described as a "retarded victim" while the abusers were called "monsters"? It was so far away from life. And I felt there would be so many themes to discover - about relationships, guilt, desire, belief, idealism, love, bravery ... I was searching for more than an easy explanation. ”

“I found an article on the Internet and couldn't stop thinking about the abused boy, a good person who gets into wrong friends ... The character touched me deeply. Why was the boy described as a "disabled victim" while his tormentors were described as "monsters"? It was so far from real life. And I found there were so many topics to discover - about relationships, guilt, desire, belief, idealism, love, courage ... I was looking for more than a simple explanation. "

- Katrin Gebbe : Melbourne International Film Festival

financing

Katrin Gebbe and Verena Höfe-Gräft , the producer of the film, met while studying at the Hamburg Media School and started working on the project in 2009.

The film was commissioned by the ZDF editorial team, Das kleine Fernsehspiel, and was supervised by the editor Katharina Dufter . Further funding came from Nordmedia Lower Saxony / Bremen and the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund . Overall, the film had a budget of around 470,000 euros. It was loaned by Rapid Eye Movies .

Filming

The shooting took place from May 15 to June 26, 2012 in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.

Festivals and evaluation

Tore tanzt was the only German contribution in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival 2013. Even before the premiere, the US rights were bought by the distributor Drafthouse Films.

This was followed by festival participation in Karlovy Vary (June 2013) and Melbourne (July 2013), before the German premiere at the Hamburg Film Festival in September 2013 . There Katrin Gebbe received the Montblanc Script Award .

The German theatrical release was on November 28, 2013. In the USA, the film opened in individual cinemas on June 27, 2014. On June 29, 2015, the film finally had its TV premiere on ZDF - Das kleine Fernsehspiel.

reception

Because of its drastic scenes of mistreatment and torture, Tore dances was controversial among film critics as well as viewers. The director said about the premiere in Cannes:

“We expected it to be controversial, and that was what happened. We had boos and cheers, escapees and long standing ovations. It was intense! I think we stirred up a hornets' nest. And that is what artists should do. "

“We expected it to be controversial, and so it turned out. There were boos and cheers, people fleeing and long standing applause. It was very intense! I think we roused a wasp's nest. And that's what artists should do. "

- Katrin Gebbe : Melbourne International Film Festival

Reviews

The majority of the German film critics were impressed by the film. But there were negative judgments:

"A disturbing study of martyrs that shows how much power there can be in German cinema."

- cinema.de

“Why do you have to clap for goals ? Not only because a German film dares to venture far out of the comfort zone, but also because it triggers. For me it is the memories of the seemingly outrageous power structures in the Nazi era and the incredibly sadistic acts of people who were otherwise considered 'normal'. For my colleague Joachim, it was again thoughts about the current German society - its split in passivity and sadistic-happy exploitation.

But whatever it may be for the individual, Tore dances can do something that German film has not done for a long time: it moves. "

- Beatrice Behn : kino-zeit.de

“With her religious allegory of the innocent on whom the Passion of Christ is imposed, Katrin Gebbe goes one step further. She consciously crosses boundaries and triggers physical discomfort, especially since compassion and identification are not options here. Tore could - also this is one possible interpretation - be to blame for what happened to him. Perhaps he only brings out evil in people because his passive humility is so provocative, because he doesn't want it any other way. Naive delusion or courageous sacrifice - Gebbe refuses to give clear answers. As a viewer you have to find your own attitude towards the film, and that's not that easy. A disturbing film. And disturbance is far too rare in German cinema. "

- Michael Ranze : spiegel.de

“But Katrin Gebbe constructs the bloodlust in which Tore dances ends from an everyday situation. This raises the question of whether a certain masochism on the part of the victim might not play a role as well as the perpetrators' perversions. One can find that repulsive, because Gebbe's film also exaggerates the violence in a cinematic way, at least at the beginning it is wrapped in dreamy images in order to reflect the gentle disposition of its protagonist. "

- David Steinitz : sueddeutsche.de

"You could easily cope with Tore dances ," he presented answers. Good and bad, love and hate, normality and illness, however, remain ambiguous. Even more provocative is the persistence with which the production forces Tores suffering into our gaze. There may be a fine line between artistic consistency and excess, but it is this radicalism that makes the questions of the film so haunting. Incidentally, it was also Nietzsche who wrote: "He who can dance in chains is free."

- Patrick Seyboth : epd-film.de

“The director torments the viewer. Not only because of the unsavory torture scenes, also because Tore could put an end to it all at any time. Tore is never a prisoner. Not like in the horror film, where the victim cannot escape the tormentor. He wouldn't even have to do anything himself, he would just have to go to the police and report the family. Why he doesn't actively help the daughter, but only shows her how he can endure all the pain to be with her, is difficult to understand. Also it is not clarified why the parents are so angry. There are no answers and no compromises. The world is divided into good and bad, into victims and perpetrators. The film is the modern version of the Passion of Christ and therefore the story can only end badly, because Jesus also died on the cross in the end. Tore is the Jesus freak and lost from the start. The viewer can be a shocked witness of his (godly?) Downfall. "

- Miriam Eck : flip book - dkritik.de

“Nevertheless, the film fails because of its indecision, because of the perceived arbitrariness in its presentation. As a brief shock in the cinema, Tore tanzt works surprisingly well, especially when you realize how little of it goes beyond the simple effect and how bumpy the construction ultimately remains. Gebbe dares a tightrope act between dramaturgical clarity and cinematic openness. After all, there were boos in Cannes. Not the worst form of award. "

- Frédéric Jaeger : critic.de

Jury reasons

The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the title "Particularly valuable" :

“Good and bad, perpetrator and victim, belief and betrayal - there are existential opposites that Katrin Gebbe's debut film deals with in an almost radical way, without generalizing. He portrays the character Tore as a modern figure of Jesus who has vowed to take on the suffering of others. The film goes to the utmost to show how relentlessly, immediately and uncontrollably evil can strike in people. Gebbe does not explicitly show violence. Benno's cruel deeds take place less in the picture than in the mind of the beholder. Julius Feldmeier as Tore and Sascha Alexander Gersak as Benno are incredibly convincing in their roles and make us aware in every scene that something is happening here that can no longer be stopped. For no one involved. The spiral of sadism keeps turning up to the uncompromising and consistent end. Tore dances does not explain evil. But shows that it is there. German films have seldom been so radical. So provocative, courageous and powerful. "

- Jury statement : German Film and Media Assessment (FBW)

The film won two awards from the German Film Critics. The jury's reasoning:

“This debut feature film impresses with the difficult-to-digest symbiosis of the narrative with the film images given to it. The tragic plot is aestheticized in a film: gripping, powerful images alternate with dream-like, calm scenes. The contrasts of dark, narrow rooms and expanses flooded with light, of sadism that is frighteningly quick to life and childlike, naive innocence convey the breadth of the human soul. However, it is not just those opposites, but above all the subtle nuances that have given us a debut that is deeply moving and impressive. "

- Jury reasoning : German Film Critics' Prize for the best feature film debut