Ghosted

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Movie
German title Ghosted
Original title Ghosted
Country of production Germany , Taiwan
original language German , English , Mandarin
Publishing year 2009
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Monika Treut
script Astrid Ströher
Monika Treut
production Monika Treut
music Uwe Haas
camera Bernd Meiners
cut Renate Ober
occupation

Ghosted is a German-Taiwanese fictional film by the Hamburg director Monika Treut from 2009 .

action

The Hamburg artist Sophie travels to Taiwan to come to terms with the sudden, unexplained death of her friend and lover Ai-ling . In Taipei she meets the mysterious journalist Mei-li, who allegedly researches Ai-ling's death for a Taiwanese newspaper and does not miss any chance to get closer to Sophie. Sophie categorically refuses to give any interviews, but she can't stop Mei-li from approaching her again and again. She also visits Sophie at her hotel and offers to show her Taipei in a way that tourists normally do not experience. Mei-li thinks that will do Sophie good and drive away the ghosts of the past. So they move through the city together, watch a school class follow their teacher in a militarily organized manner, encounter a street parade with colorful figures and look around a night market. To eat, they sit down at a snack bar, where Sophie has to face the Asian dishes. Here she begins to tell Mei-li about her relationship with Ai-ling:

Sophie had met Ai-ling in Hamburg when she was visiting and wanted to find out something about her deceased father. She had never really gotten to know him and hoped that her uncle could tell her more about him. Sophie and Ai-ling met while going to the cinema and talked in English because neither spoke the other's language. On the same day they fell in love and shortly afterwards Ai-ling moved in with Sophie and they were boundlessly happy together. At least the first time. When Sophie told Ai-ling that she shouldn't become so dependent on herself, she got it wrong and began to be suspicious. That drove her to go out alone to a single bar for women in the evenings when Sophie was working in Berlin. Here she met Katrin Bendersen, with whom she wanted to go to Sophie's apartment. There was an argument on the way there and when Ai-ling broke away from Katrin, she ran right in front of a car.

Mei-li confesses to Sophie that she feels very close to her, but she realizes that Sophie is not yet ready for a new relationship. The memory of Ai-ling is just too strong. When Sophie left Taipei for Germany, Mei-li followed her without further ado. Here she confesses to her that she only thinks about Sophie, but Mei-li does not only seem to be interested in her and she is doing research in Hamburg about how Ai-ling died. From the news she learns about a suicide by Katrin Bendersen, whose name she had met in connection with Ai-ling's accident death.

Sophie has since researched Mei-li and found that she is not a journalist at all and does not work for the newspaper in Taipei. Sophie wants to confront her and know who would have sent her, but Mei-ling doesn't answer her. After her research shows that neither Mei-li has entered Germany nor left Taipei, she goes to Taipei again to talk to Ai-ling's mother and understand this puzzling process. She comes just in time for a memorial service for Ai-ling, at which, according to Taiwanese tradition, money is burned for the deceased so that their ghosts leave the bereaved in peace. During the ceremony, Sophie thinks she sees Ai-ling move away from all of them.

background

Ghosted combines the traditional ghost stories of Taiwanese culture and German romanticism and is the first German-Taiwanese co-production. Monika Treut produced the film with her production company Hyena Films in coproduction with Chi & Company , PTS, Taiwan , and ZDF / 3sat . The film was shot in Hamburg and Taipei. The cinema release in Germany was on April 30, 2009. The premiere was on February 7, 2009 at the Berlinale . The international premiere took place on March 21st at the Melbourne Queer Festival .

Reviews

Birgit Glombitza at Spiegel.de assessed: “Monika Treut's new film 'Ghosted' does grief work with the means of the cinema. And it is a far-reaching picture journey into a foreign culture, in order to explore one's own soul life. ”The filmmaker goes“ into strange, ostensibly mystical terrain. And not with the safety margin of the documentary, but with a fiction that itself wanders somewhat eerily between lifeworlds and cultures, between longings and projections. "

"With 'Ghosted', director Monika Treut has succeeded in creating a fascinating film," said Christian Horn at filmstarts.de

Silvy Pommerenke from AVIVA-Berlin said: “The new Monika Treut is doing really well, and she conveys - in addition to the exciting and mystical framework that sometimes blurs the line between fiction and reality - a profound portrait of Taiwan, which is somewhere between modernity and tradition is torn. Despite all the cultural differences, the film shows one thing above all: love is universal and does not care about social norms. "

Volker Robrahn from filmszene.de wrote appreciatively: “Absolutely on feature film level and indeed at a very excellent one, but the story moves, which despite a very calm staging manages to build up an almost hypnotic tension and which also knows how to convince with its sophisticated, finely drawn characters ... "

The critics of the television magazine TV Spielfilm described the film as an "Arg provincial lesson on cultural differences."

Awards

The film received the Special Achievement Award at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Turin 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Ghosted . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2009 (PDF; test number: 116 818 K).
  2. ↑ Birgit Glombitza: Vom ingenious mourning at Spiegel.de , accessed on November 29, 2012.
  3. ↑ Christian Horn: film review at filmstarts.de , accessed on November 29, 2012.
  4. ↑ Silvy Pommerenke: Interview with Monika Treut - New feature film now in the cinema at AVIVA-Berlin.de, May 15, 2009, accessed on May 1, 2020.
  5. ↑ Volker Robrahn: Ghosted-Filmkritik at filmszene.de, accessed on November 29, 2012.
  6. ↑ tvspielfilm.de : Film review accessed on January 20, 2015.