Friendship!
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Friendship! |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany , USA |
| original language | German , English |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 6 JMK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Markus Goller |
| script |
Oliver Ziegenbalg based on a story by Thomas Zickler |
| production |
Quirin Berg , Max Wiedemann , Thomas Zickler |
| music | Martin Probst |
| camera | Ueli Steiger |
| cut | Olivia Retzer |
| occupation | |
| |
Friendship! (in German : friendship! ) is a German feature film by director Markus Goller from 2010. The film is based on the screenplay by Oliver Ziegenbalg and contains elements of a road movie as well as tragicomic moments. Inspired by the story of the filmmaker Thomas Zickler , he talks about the two friends Veit and Tom, after the fall of the wall with that of the Federal Republic received welcome money to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco , traveling, the westernmost point of the world. Matthias Schweighöfer and Friedrich Mücke appeared in front of the camera in the leading roles .
Friendship! started in German cinemas on January 14, 2010. With almost 1.6 million visitors, Friendship! the most successful German movie in 2010.
action
Berlin , 1989: After the wall fell, Veit and his friend Tom decide to fly to San Francisco . Veit first pretends to want to travel to San Francisco because of the Golden Gate Bridge - "the westernmost point in the world". Tom is also fascinated by the idea and therefore joins his friend. Since the money saved is not enough, the two book a flight to New York City . Once there, with only 55 dollars, a few items of clothing and a few films he made himself, Tom reveals the real reason for Veit's wish to travel to San Francisco: Veit's main goal is to see his father again, who was 12 years ago fled from the GDR and whose only sign of life is an annual postcard for Vitus's birthday.
Just in time for his birthday, Veit wants to wait in front of the post office in San Francisco to meet his father there when he gives up the annual birthday card for Veit. They decide to hitchhike on, as the remaining money would just be enough for a train ticket to New Jersey .
A comic artist named Daryll takes them to San Francisco in his AMC Pacer . Daryll takes the two of them to a bar where they can show their film in the hope of making some money. They meet two young girls whom they invite home. Since their parents unexpectedly return earlier, Tom and Veit have to leave the house in a hurry and spend the night in the wilderness.
The next morning they get a free breakfast in a diner . There Veit brings one of the guests, a biker, his wallet, which he had left on the table. The biker's motorcycle gang then takes them west.
During a rest, however, there is an argument between Veit and a drunken biker and Tom is injured in his teeth when he tries to intervene. Biker Hope lends Veit and Tom his brother's car - a Pontiac Firebird - on condition that they take it to Hope's brother near San Francisco. The biker also realizes that he does not have a key for the trunk. Despite the suspicion of the two that they are supposed to be transporting drugs or weapons, they accept the offer. In fact, there are fan articles for the Star Wars film series in the trunk . However, the two of them only come to this conclusion after they are stopped by the police and they forcefully open the trunk.
In Silver City they get to know Zoey in a supermarket, who understands her language because of her German mother and where they can spend two days. In the local meeting house they show a documentary about the GDR, are invited by the mayor and sell pieces of painted concrete as supposedly real parts of the Berlin Wall in order to be able to finance a necessary repair of the car. Eventually the trio headed for San Francisco. During a stopover in Las Vegas, Veit and Tom go stripping in a gay club in Russian army disguise to earn money for dental treatment that has become necessary for Tom.
While Veit is waiting for the other two in the hotel room, Tom spends the night with Zoey. When Veit finds out in the morning, he reacts angrily because he is also in love with Zoey, yells at Tom and continues the drive with the car alone. Tom feels guilty and eventually breaks up with Zoey. It remains unclear whether the two will see each other again.
In San Francisco, Tom and Veit meet again in front of the said post office and they are reconciled. When Veit goes to get the two of them a pizza, Tom stops in front of the post office. Shortly afterwards, he thought he recognized Veit's father when he saw a man running to the post office with a postcard in his hand. Tom speaks to him, and after initial hesitation, the stranger declares that he is not Vitus' father. He was shot while trying to escape at the wall. At the time, the man himself had applied to leave the country, which the Stasi granted on the condition that instead of the victims of the Berlin Wall , he would send cards and letters to their relatives in order to make them believe that the attempted escape had not occurred ended fatally.
Before Veit comes back with the pizza, the strange man is gone again, but has left the postcard for Tom. Tom tells Veit that his father is dead. He then runs aimlessly through San Francisco. Tom follows him to the Golden Gate Bridge, where they both hug. The film ends with them delivering Hope's car to his brother.
background
The film is based on a trip by producer Tom Zickler.
After the reunification, Zickler set out with friends to travel to San Francisco. For financial reasons, they too could only fly to New York and had to hitchhike the rest of the way, could barely speak English and had to earn money in a strip club.
Friendship! was made by Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion in co-production with Mr. Brown Entertainment and SevenPictures. The film was the first cinema project to be distributed by the Deutsche Columbia Pictures Filmproduktion.
The parents of the film character Tom are portrayed by Matthias Schweighöfer's actual parents. The sketches that the illustrator, who takes Tom and Veit with him in the car, are very reminiscent of the cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy . The character is also reminiscent of the Canadian artist John Kricfalusi in terms of appearance and demeanor .
reception
criticism
The lexicon of international films described the comedy as a "cheerful, carefully crafted buddy movie, in which the skilful and elaborate staging is, however, blatantly disproportionate to the cliché and simplicity of the content". Kino.de summed up, “that rarely has anyone in the Wild West hit such a bombshell as these two Ossis. […] Friendship! is Markus Goller's first major feature film project. The fact that he lives in the USA and learned his trade as a commercial filmmaker benefits him. Because seldom before has a German director portrayed the vastness of the American hinterland so splendidly ”.
Critic.de wrote; “The riddle of Vitus' past provides a tragic undertone from the start. The actual destination of his trip is his father, who fled the GDR years ago and now lives in San Francisco. When he throws in his son's annual birthday postcard, the only sign of life since then, Veit wants to miss him, and so the journey soon becomes a race against time. [...] At last we learn how right he is doing it, and at the same time Friendship begins! then hesitantly on explicit political terrain - how successful it was is arguable, but the film has little in common with the opinionated gesture of The Lives of Others (2006) from the same house . "
Johannes von der Gathen, author for dpa , described the film as an "entertaining, but very simple-minded comedy, [which] leads straight and without subtlety from the socialist rain to the neo-capitalist eaves". “The [...] director [...] doesn't leave out any cliché about the clash of cultures. [...] Whether the producers Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg, who created a sensation a few years ago with the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”, will be able to celebrate similar successes with this half-hearted humorous bout of humor, can be highly doubted. The screenplay by Oliver Ziegenbalg moves from gag to gag far too listlessly for that, in between there is some criticism of capitalism before the film again bathes quite unabashedly in Ostalgie. " MovieMaze, on the other hand, wrote:" Although the crew clearly overshoots in some places Aiming too, but all in all an entertaining road movie with a good dose of situation comedy succeeds ”.
kinofenster.de selected the film as film of the month January 2010 and recommends it as an educationally valuable film that is suitable for discussion in school lessons. The film offers easy, entertaining access to the historical and political background of the GDR era and reunified Germany. "From the contrast between two countries with different systems, director Markus Goller creates all sorts of comedic sparks."
success
Friendship! premiered on January 11, 2010 at Cinemaxx at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin . The official German theatrical release followed on January 14th of that year. In Germany, the production already counted 336,777 viewers after the end of the first screening weekend and, with an average of 908 people in 371 cinemas, placed immediately behind James Cameron's Avatar - Aufbruch nach Pandora (2009) in second place in the cinema charts. In total, the comedy stayed in the top 20 of the charts for seven weeks and, with gross revenues of around 10.3 million euros, had almost 1,597,200 visitors by May 2010. In the official ranking of the most-watched films in 2010, the production took 14th place, making it the most successful German feature film production of the year.
Awards
- Bavarian Film Award 2009 in the category of best young actor for Friedrich Mücke
- Audience Award at the Festival of German Films 2010 in Madrid
- Audience Award of the Taormina Film Fest 2010 in the category Best Film (Non-Mediterranean Competition)
- Audience Award of the Salerno Shadowline Film Festival 2010 in the Best Film category
- MTV Movie Awards 2011 in the categories Best German Film , Best Actor in a German Film , and Best Fiddling in a German Film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for Friendship! Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (German) 2010 ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2011 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. , Filmförderungsanstalt , accessed on February 10, 2011
- ↑ The real story of the movie "Friendship!" on morgenpost.de
- ↑ Information on the companies on wb-film.com ( memento of the original from August 21, 2010 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.
- ↑ Kino.de Kinocharts Woche 2/2010 , accessed on February 19, 2010
- ↑ Friendship! . In: Lexicon of International Films . Zweiausendeins.de. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ^ Film review . In: Kino.de . Kino.de. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
- ^ Film review on critic.de , accessed on February 1, 2010
- ↑ Played on ka-news.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 14, 2010
- ^ Film review on moviemaze.de , accessed on February 11, 2010
- ↑ Philipp Bühler: Friendship! - Film of the month January 2010. In: kinofenster.de. Federal Agency for Civic Education and Vision Cinema , December 16, 2009, accessed on January 15, 2012 .
- ↑ a b Two Ossis make the USA unsafe . In: Berliner Morgenpost . Morgenpost.de. January 10, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ↑ Kinocharts D - Avatar without a stop, Friendship! starts very well . Movie-Infos.de. January 20, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ↑ a b Film hit list: Annual list (German) 2010 - Filmförderungsanstalt, accessed on July 26, 2011
- ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (international) 2010 of the Filmförderungsanstalt
- ↑ Barbara Sukowa named best actress . In: Stern . Stern.de. January 15, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ↑ A Seemingly Neverending Rush of Visitors . German-Films.de. June 16, 2010. Accessed on December 7, 2011. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Friendship!" successful in Taormina . In: Blickpunkt: Film . Mediabiz. June 21, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ↑ Home / Movies / EUFF: Friendship! . GV.com.sg. Archived from the original on August 4, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
- ↑ Matthias Schweighöfer and Karoline Herfurth win in the German categories of the MTV Movie Awards 2011 . In: MTV . MTV.de. Retrieved on December 7, 2011. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- Friendship! in the Internet Movie Database (English)