4 days in May
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | 4 days in May |
| Country of production | Germany , Russia , Ukraine |
| original language | Russian , German , English |
| Publishing year | 2011 |
| length | 97 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Achim von Borries |
| script | Achim von Borries, Eduard Resnik |
| production |
Stefan Arndt , Aleksey Guskov |
| music | Thomas Feiner |
| camera | Bernd Fischer |
| cut | Antje Zynga |
| occupation | |
| |
4 Days in May is an anti-war film and drama by Achim von Borries from 2011 . It is about a Red Army scouting group who fights with Wehrmacht soldiers against their own troops in order to protect German women and children. The film is based on a true story.
action
It is the morning of May 4, 1945, four days before the end of the Second World War . Captain Kalmykow and a scout team occupy a children's home on the Baltic coast . A wide strip of land can be viewed on the strategically located site. They observe how residents and refugees flee to the Baltic coast in boats to get to Denmark . In addition, around 80 soldiers of the Wehrmacht are lying on the beach , who also want to transfer to Denmark to surrender to the English there. The captain of the Red Army is dissatisfied that he should remain in this place with only a few men in order to prevent the clearly outnumbered German soldiers from fleeing. He only has a defective gun . However, since he has already been demoted twice for disobedience in the past , he bows to the orders of his major , who move on with his troops. His men admire Kalmykov for his steadfastness and gave him the nickname "Dragon" many years ago: every time his head was "severed" - by degradation - it supposedly "grew" after the humiliation of him Superiors did not bow down.
The Red Army soldiers are tired of war and long for victory in order to be able to return to their homeland and their families. They occupy the children's home, but treat the children and the staff, as well as their leader - Baroness Maria - comparatively well. Like the captain, she comes from Leningrad and therefore speaks Russian, which makes the involuntary meeting a little easier. Her nephew, the 13-year-old orphan Peter, however, refuses to believe that the war is lost. When he witnessed a battle between German and Soviet soldiers, he got himself a Wehrmacht uniform and sneaked back to the children's home armed with a submachine gun to protect his aunt and the other children. There, however, he was captured by the Soviet soldiers and initially treated as a prisoner of war , since a Soviet soldier was hit by a bullet in the previous battle. However, it later emerges that this injury was caused by a bullet and that Peter could not have shot him. From now on, Peter is also allowed to move relatively freely around the area. In addition, he was raised bilingually by the baroness and is needed as an interpreter .
Meanwhile, Anna , the nanny, is also hiding on the farm for fear of being raped . Peter sees himself - in his search for recognition - as their protector. He raves about her and has to watch as Anna is discovered by Kalmykow. The pretty young woman now threatens to become the victim of an attack by the Soviet soldiers and comes under the special protection of the captain. And Peter, too, increasingly sees the captain as a substitute for his father, especially since he lost his wife, son and daughter in the war. The captain's son, so Peter learns in a conversation, had only entered the army to prove his heroism to his father. A father-son relationship develops between the two. Kalmykow, for example, saves Peter from drowning in the Baltic Sea or destroys his uniform so that he is mistaken for a boy and not a soldier.
Peter - as the only "man" in the children's home - contacts the German troops around Lieutenant Colonel Wald in order to persuade them to attack the Russians. But the soldiers just want to flee and so Peter has to realize that all his ideals of the superiority of the Germans are dissolving into smoke and mirrors. They too come to terms with the Russian troops and make it clear that they no longer want to fight - but neither side wants to surrender. Peter's growing up is put to another tough test when he realizes that Anna falls in love with the soldier Fedjunin, who enchants her with his piano music in the children's home. Peter is full of jealousy and reveals a meeting between the two, whereupon Fedjunin is to be tried on a court martial . However, Peter realizes his misconduct in good time and confesses to the captain that Anna met the soldier voluntarily and that the alleged rapist posed no danger to her at the meeting.
The situation escalated when the Soviet major returned to the children's home four days later, on the day the war ended, to pick up the remaining troops. There is an argument between the major and the captain when the major tries to assault Anna. The major then orders his troops to attack the children's home with their own Russian soldiers. The captain can initially decide the subsequent battle for himself, since the major lacks the tanks for an advance. When they arrive shortly afterwards, they advance towards the building again. Completely unexpectedly, the German soldiers help the trapped Red Army soldiers and together put the major to flight. Lieutenant Colonel Wald, to whom his own freedom was more important than the residents of the home for a long time, several Germans and some of the captain's men died in the battle. Peter has to witness the fighting in the basement of the building in which the Red Army soldiers locked him up for his own protection. Now he too is shown the futility of war. Peter and the German inmates of the home leave the island by boat, Lieutenant Colonel Wald has fallen, Kalmykow - this one with a shot in the stomach - and his soldiers stay - for the time being? - back in front of the home.
publication
The film was the first time on August 9, 2011 at the International Film Festival in Locarno listed. The first broadcast in Germany took place on September 29, 2011. Further screenings took place on February 16, 2012 in Russia , the following day in Kazakhstan and on February 23, 2012 in Ukraine .
Locations
For the scenes in the children's home, von Borries chose Bothkamp Castle in the municipality of the same name in the Barkauer Land region in the Plön district in Schleswig-Holstein . The landscape scenes and the settings on the coast built on Rügen (there is also the incident that was the film underlying occurred), and in the present there airbase on the peninsula bug .
Criticism and award
The majority of the reviews for the film were positive. The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the title “particularly valuable”. Based on the true story, the jury particularly emphasized how "Achim von Borries talks about how in war (which is also exemplary for other conflicts) the fronts do not always run between official opponents and that compassion can develop a subversive force" . The website kino.de rates the film with four out of five stars and writes: “Moving anti-war drama on the German Baltic Sea coast with figures precisely drawn by Achim von Borries.” Cinema comes to the conclusion: “A classic anti-war film that dispenses with cynical excesses of violence . "For arte , the film is" a moving drama about the return of humanity after dark years, about forgiveness, respect, overcoming prejudices, friendship and love. " Christian Buß sees the film much more critically on SPIEGEL-Online and finds the" Action shoot almost cynical ”. He continues: "The emotional devastation and racist conditioning that preceded the zero hour are ignored [...] As praiseworthy as this financing and staging model appears - the German-Russian Feelgood cooperation was obviously so focused on reconciliation, that the historical atrocities were left out of the equation. Pure international understanding kitsch. "
Web links
- 4 days in May in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Website of X Verleih AG , accessed on May 6, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for 4 days in May . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2011 (PDF; test number: 128 949 K).
- ↑ a b 4 days in May , website of the German Film and Media Assessment, accessed on May 3, 2014.
- ↑ 4 days in May: Interview with director Achim von Borries , website from trailerseite.ch, accessed on May 1, 2014.
- ↑ 4 days in May , website from kino.de, accessed on May 2, 2014.
- ↑ 4 days in May (2011) , website from cinema.de, accessed on May 5, 2014.
- ↑ 4 days in May ( Memento from May 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), arte.tv website, accessed on May 1, 2014.
- ↑ Christian Buß : German-Russian war drama: Red bulbous nose meets Nazi buddy . In: SPIEGEL ONLINE , accessed on May 1, 2014