Half stairs
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Half stairs |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 111 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andreas Dresen |
| script | Andreas Dresen |
| production | Peter Rommel |
| music | 17 hippies |
| camera | Michael Hammon |
| cut | Jörg Hauschild |
| occupation | |
| |
Half Staircase is a German feature film from 2002 . The tragic comedy was directed by Andreas Dresen . The main roles were played by Axel Prahl , Thorsten Merten , Steffi Kühnert and Gabriela Maria Schmeide .
action
Two married couples who are friends are shown in their everyday life in Frankfurt (Oder) : Ellen and Uwe Kukowski, Katrin and Chris Düring. Ellen is a saleswoman in a perfumery, Uwe runs the snack bar "Half Staircase". Katrin has a job at the Zollhof on the motorway near the Polish border, Chris is a radio host.
The uniform course of everyday life breaks up when Chris Düring and Ellen Kukowski fall in love. The affair comes to light when Katrin surprises her husband and girlfriend while having sex in the bathtub. Uwe, Chris, Ellen and Katrin do not initially know how to proceed. Katrin wants a divorce, but feels more and more drawn to Chris after the affair. Chris finally decides that he wants to save his marriage while Ellen separates from Uwe.
background
Without a fixed script, the film was shot with a hand-held camera on original locations without artificial light. The music for the film was made exclusively by the Berlin band 17 Hippies , who are also playfully included in the film: a bagpiper stands in front of the snack stand on the first day, a new musician joins every day until all the members are finally gathered. The growth of the orchestra and its music underline the plot partly in a humorous, partly dramatic way. Woven into the plot are short interview scenes of the protagonists, in which the interviewer cannot be seen.
reception
The film premiered on February 12, 2002 at the Berlinale . After being shown at various film festivals in the following years, it was shown in German cinemas on October 3, 2002, where 443,101 visitors saw it. In German-speaking Switzerland it started on the same day, in Austria on October 25, 2002. Theatrical releases in other European countries followed. In Switzerland the film had a total of 22,040 admissions, in Austria it was not considered commercially successful with 4,677 admissions.
Half staircase was in the favor of the critics. Many praised him for his realistic depiction of everyday life without getting bored. The technique of filming with a handheld camera was compared with Lars von Trier's Dogma 95 project .
Reviews
“A realistic, improvised description of everyday life without a fixed script, which maintains the balance between everyday drama and exquisite comedy, both sensitively and cautiously. Although a lot is only hinted at or touched on as if in passing, the film unfolds a high degree of conciseness and poetic density, in that it painfully brings the different desires and needs to awareness. "
"Instead of sadness, his film shows the not unhappy depths of everyday life, instead of social hardship simply two married couples over thirty in a relationship crisis, which is why the viewer leaves the film with a pleasant mix of feelings of amusement and pity."
"And yet, the surprising thing is that you stay on the ball until the end, that you soon begin to love the characters despite or perhaps because of their average character - and in some places even laugh out loud."
"The idea of an aesthetic-socio-political cinema project emerges in which East German disillusionment becomes a symptom of a general hangover mood."
Awards
The film ran in the competition at the Berlinale 2002 and won the Silver Bear as the Grand Jury Prize. Andreas Dresen was honored as Best Director and the four main actors as Best Ensemble at the Chicago International Film Festival . The film received the Silver Trace at the Flanders International Film Festival and was nominated for the main prize, the Golden Trace . On the Valladolid International Film Festival ran Grill Point also competing.
The film was nominated for the German Film Prize in 2002 for Best Feature Film and Best Director . It was awarded the Silver Best Feature Film . The Bavarian Film Prize went to Axel Prahl for Best Actor and Andreas Dresen for Best Director . The film was nominated for the audience award in the Best Director category and for the regular award in the Best Director category at the European Film Awards ceremony . In 2002, Half Staircase was the winner of the German Film Critics' Award in the Best Feature Film category .
literature
- Jörn Glasenapp : On the edge, on the bank: Frankfurt an der Oder and the German-Polish border in Andreas Dresen's "Half Staircase" and Hans-Christian Schmid's "Lights" , in: Rundfunk und Geschichte , vol. 33 (2008), H. 3/4, pp. 50-55.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for half stairs . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2003 (PDF; test number: 90 646 V / DVD).
- ↑ Half the stairs. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
Web links
- Half staircase in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Half stairs at Filmportal.de