Colonia Dignidad - There is no going back

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Colonia Dignidad - There is no going back
Original title Colonia
Country of production Germany , Luxembourg , France
original language English
Publishing year 2015
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Florian Gallenberger
script Torsten Wenzel
Florian Gallenberger
production Benjamin Herrmann
music André Dziezuk
Fernando Velázquez
camera Kolja Brandt
cut Hansjörg Weißbrich
occupation
synchronization

Colonia Dignidad - There is no turning back is an international thriller by director Florian Gallenberger from 2015 with Emma Watson and Daniel Brühl in the leading roles. The film was produced by Benjamin Herrmann and tells a fictional story against the background of the real Colonia Dignidad , a settlement of a German sect founded in 1961 in the south of Chile , which hit the headlines in the wake of Augusto Pinochet's military coup in 1973 due to human rights violations.

action

Chile 1973. The flight attendant Lena pays her friend Daniel a surprise visit to Santiago de Chile . Daniel is a photographer and part of a student activist group in Santiago that supports the socialist president Salvador Allende . Daniel and Lena enjoy the days together and their love, but on the morning of September 11th, General Augusto Pinochet's military coup tore apart the idyll and plunged the city into chaos. Daniel and Lena try to escape, but, like thousands of others, are caught and taken to the national stadium in Santiago , where a defector identifies Allende's supporters. Some are shot on the spot, others - including Daniel - abducted.

Completely shocked, Lena is released from the stadium the next morning. She finds Daniel's apartment devastated. She learns from his friends in the student group that Daniel has probably been taken to a secret torture camp run by the military police on the grounds of the ominous Colonia Dignidad . Lena is determined to free Daniel, but the students have given up on him. At Amnesty International , Lena learns that the Colonia is a sect, a religious community strictly sealed off from the outside world under the leadership of Paul Schäfer , a German lay preacher who has built a world according to his ideas in nowhere in Chile.

Although Amnesty advised her not to take any action, Lena Daniel does not want to give up. She makes her way south to smuggle herself into the Colonia Dignidad as a "new sect member". She goes into the disturbing world around Paul Schäfer, who lets himself be called "Pius", and experiences firsthand the mechanisms of oppression that determine life within the Colonia. Men, women and children - including family members - are strictly separated from each other, hard physical work and martial punishments determine the days, residents of the Colonia have to spy on each other and above everything hovers the sadistic cynicism of Paul Schäfer, who also abuses young boys.

But when General Pinochet visits his allies in the Colonia, Lena finally discovers Daniel, who has survived the torture and pretends to be brain damaged by the torture in the Colonia. He is considered harmless and helps in the locksmith's shop. Lena and Daniel arrange a secret meeting in the potato shed and discover a secret, underground tunnel system. This serves the Colonia for torture and also includes a presumed escape route from the Colonia premises. One of the photos that Daniel shoots there for documentation later inadvertently reached Schäfer and threatens to blow the secret bond between Lena and Daniel. By blaming another resident of the colony for taking the photos, Daniel distracts Schäfer from himself so that he can escape with Lena and her fellow prisoner Ursel. Through the tunnel you get to an exit outside the electric fence. However, there are self-firing systems that kill Ursel.

In Santiago de Chile, Lena and Daniel receive new passports and their home flight tickets at the German embassy. When they arrived at the airport with the Lufthansa aircraft ready to take off, they only now realize that the German ambassador is cooperating with Schäfer and, together with him at the airport, wants to prevent the two refugees from leaving the country. However, despite a short-term take-off ban, the pilot lets his colleague Lena convince him to take off by plane.

Historical background

The Colonia Dignidad was a German sect founded in 1961 by the lay preacher Paul Schäfer . Completely cut off from the outside world, Schäfer's approximately 300 supporters from Germany and Austria were oppressed, abused and tortured. Chilean and German authorities did not care about the conditions in the Colonia, as it successfully cultivated an image as an innocent, hardworking, agricultural community. Paul Schäfer had close ties to the Chilean military and to General Augusto Pinochet , who successfully carried out a coup d' état and purge actions against the socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973 . Paul Schäfer made the underground facilities of the Colonia Pinochets secret police DINA available as a torture camp, in which numerous political prisoners were tortured and killed. It was not until the 1990s that the inhuman system became known to a wider public; Paul Schäfer fled to Argentina, where he was arrested in 2004. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison for the thousandfold child abuse and other crimes and died in 2010 in Santiago prison.

While the two main characters Lena and Daniel are fictional characters, the events within the Colonia Dignidad in the film are based on real events. This applies both to individual scenes, such as B. Paul Schäfers attempt to bring a sect member back to life, as well as for the basic living conditions and processes within the Colonia, z. B. the strict separation of men, women and children, the compulsory dispensing of medication and psychotropic drugs to the sect members, the punishments for even the smallest misconduct.

The collaboration between the German Embassy in Santiago de Chile and the cult leader Paul Schäfer, which the film addresses, is also historically documented. Even if this did not happen in the pointed manner as described in the film, the German Embassy held its protective hand over the Colonia Dignidad for years and, for example, sent sect members who had actually managed to escape from the fenced and heavily guarded area and those who sought refuge in the embassy returned to Colonia, where they were punished for their flight. After a visit of several days to the Colonia Dignidad in 1977, the German ambassador Erich Strätling even gave his word of honor that all allegations against Paul Schäfer's community (including torture and child abuse) were completely unfounded.

Director and co-screenwriter Florian Gallenberger researched in Chile for years and had exclusive access to former members of the Colonia Dignidad and historical photo and film material that had never been shown outside of the Colonia Dignidad before. Former residents of Colonia Dignidad who saw the film confirmed the authenticity during the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and were happy that a memorial was made to Paul Schäfer's victims with Colonia Dignidad - There is no going back .

See also

production

Main actor Mikael Nyqvist (left) and director Florian Gallenberger

Colonia Dignidad - There is no going back - was filmed between October 2014 and January 2015 in Buenos Aires , Luxembourg , Munich and Berlin . While the scenes in Santiago de Chile were filmed in Buenos Aires, the Colonia was created as a backdrop in a disused slate mine in Martelange . The casemates of the City of Luxembourg were used for the recordings in the underground facilities . The interior scenes in the Colonia as well as the German Embassy were filmed in and around Munich, the Stadtbad Tiergarten in Berlin was closed for the flooded tunnel .

Colonia Dignidad - There is no turning back is a production by Majestic Filmproduktion , in co-production with Iris Productions , Rat Pack Filmproduktion , Rezo Productions and Fred Films , in collaboration with ProSieben and Sky . Funded by FilmFernsehFonds Bayern , Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg , Film Funding Agency , Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media , German Film Funding Fund , Film Fund Luxembourg . The project development was funded by the EU's MEDIA program. The film started in the distribution of Majestic Filmverleihe, Jan Mojtos Beta Cinema was in charge of world distribution . International distributors included Rezo Films in France , Good Films in Italy , Ascot Elite in Switzerland and Filmladen in Austria .

Director Florian Gallenberger and producer Benjamin Herrmann have already worked together on numerous projects: Herrmann was co-producer of Gallenberger's Oscar film Quiero Ser , producer of John Rabe , which won four German Film Awards, including Best Film, and both producers of Christian Zübert's film There and Away and was responsible for awarding the German Film Prize for three years as artistic director .

The film includes three well-known songs from the 1970s: Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers , Try (Just a Little Bit Harder) by Janis Joplin and Samba Pa Ti by Carlos Santana . The singing boys in the film were portrayed by the Gütersloh boys' choir .

German dubbed version

The German dubbing was done by Christa Kistner Synchronproduktion in Berlin . The dialogue book was written by Elke Weber-Moore , and the dubbing director was Pierre Peters-Arnolds . The actors Daniel Brühl , Vicky Krieps , Jeanne Werner , August Zirner , Martin Wuttke , Katharina Müller-Elmau and Johannes Allmayer synchronized themselves.

actor German speaker role
Emma Watson Miriam Stein Lena
Mikael Nyqvist Pierre Peters-Arnolds Paul Schäfer
Richenda Carey Dagmar Manzel Gisela
Julian Ovenden Volker Bruch novel
César Bordon Frank Röth Manuel Contreras
Nicolás Barsoff Tino Mewes Jorge

publication

Colonia Dignidad - There is no turning back celebrated its world premiere on September 13, 2015 at the Toronto International Film Festival and its European festival premiere on September 26, 2015 at the Zurich Film Festival .

reception

Reviews

Dieter Oßwald writes on Programmkino.de : "Telling fast-paced, equipped with plenty of suspense and a plausible cabinet of figures, an entertaining political thriller in the best genre tradition and with explosive content succeeds: the role of German foreign policy at the time has not yet been dealt with today."

The US magazine Vanity Fair was enthusiastic: “ Emma Watson infiltrating a Chilean cult is exactly as impressive as it sounds! ”

But in the course of the Toronto International Film Festival there were also critical voices from individual US critics. Jordan Mintzer wrote in the Hollywood Reporter : “ This questionable historical thriller is a dictatorship of poor filmmaking. ”

Gross profit

The film started in Germany on February 18, 2016 in Majestic Filmverleih and reached 265,000 viewers in Germany. With an estimated budget of $ 14 million, he had worldwide revenues of "only" $ 3.62 million.

Award

On January 15, 2016 Benjamin Herrmann and Christian Becker received the award for best producers at the Bavarian Film Prize 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Colonia Dignidad - There is no going back . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2015 (PDF; test number: 155 770 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Colonia Dignidad - There is no turning back . Youth Media Commission (  TV version).
  3. ↑ epd -Meldung: "Colonia Dignidad" Paul Shepherd: protests at the funeral . stuttgarter-nachrichten.de, April 26, 2010.
  4. ↑ a b “The guilt was charged” - Florian Gallenberger in an interview on Deutschlandradio Kultur. Retrieved October 11, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Emma Watson, Daniel Bruhl to star in thriller 'Colonia'. Retrieved October 11, 2015 .
  6. ↑ https://www.nw.de/lokal/kreis_guetersloh/guetersloh/20706555_Jungen-des-Guetersloher-Knabenchors-spiele-in-zentraler-Szene-von-Colonia-Dignidad.html
  7. ↑ Press release of the Toronto International Film Festival ( Memento of the original dated February 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / tiff.net
  8. ^ Website of the Zurich Film Festival
  9. ^ Dieter Oßwald: Colonia Dignidad. programmkino.de, accessed on October 10, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Katey Rich: Emma Watson Infiltrating a Chilean Cult Is Exactly as Impressive as It Sounds. Retrieved October 10, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Jordan Mintzer: Emma Watson and Daniel Bruhl headline this suspense film set in 1970s Chile. Retrieved October 10, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Annual hit list (national) 2016 https://www.ffa.de/filmhitlisten.html , PDF, accessed on September 11, 2018
  13. ↑ Colonia (2015) - IMDb. Accessed December 24, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Colonia. Retrieved May 10, 2020 .