Lights

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Movie
Original title Lights
Country of production Germany
original language German , Polish , Russian
Publishing year 2003
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Hans-Christian Schmid
script Hans-Christian Schmid
Michael Gutmann
production Jakob Claussen
Thomas Wöbke
music The Notwist
camera Bogumił Godfrejów
cut Hansjörg Weißbrich
occupation

Lights is the title of a German feature film by Hans-Christian Schmid from 2003, who was also a participant in the official competition of the Berlinale 2003 in the same year .

action

In a parallel montage, the film tells several episodes that are only loosely and partly not linked at all. All play in the area of ​​or directly in the German Frankfurt (Oder) and the Polish Słubice , which are only separated from the Oder and the German-Polish border, the border crossing is discussed several times. The film is kept very realistic, the stories reflect the everyday worries, but also to some extent existential fears, of simple and realistically portrayed people who usually elude clear good-bad schemes. The episodes in detail:

  • The Ukrainian Refugees - At the beginning of the film, a small group of Ukrainian refugees are dropped off by their smugglers in the forest near Słubice - they are told that they are only a few kilometers from Berlin . While the young Kolya and his friends try to cross the border alone, Anna and Dimitri confide in a Polish taxi driver with their small child. Kolya is picked up by the German border troops and meets the young interpreter Sonja while in custody, shortly before he is deported to Poland again. Together with her friend Christoph, she tries to find Kolya in Słubice and to drive across the border.
  • The unemployed in Frankfurt / Oder - Ingo runs a mattress shop shortly after the bankruptcy. He puts everything on a final promotion and engages u. a. the young unemployed Simone for this. The promotion fails and Ingo suffers one setback after the other, while Simone has to watch everything. Nevertheless, Ingo is short-sighted in several ways and does not notice that Simone would like to help him even without pay.
  • The cigarette smugglers - a little outside of Frankfurt, the two teenagers Marko and Andreas live in the scrap yard of petty criminal Mike. Marko and his girlfriend Katharina smuggle cigarettes from Poland to Germany. When Katharina is taken into custody by the authorities, however, Andreas sets out to free her and to flee from the smuggling together with the proceeds. However, Marko and Mike pick them up and take revenge - initially.
  • The Polish taxi driver - Antoni is desperately trying to earn money for his daughter's communion dress, as his wife Milena has been cheated out of her last wage by her boss Ingo. However, when he cannot do it with regular work, he takes in the Ukrainian refugees Anna and Dimitri and tries to get them across the border.
  • The planned factory - Philipp, a young architect, meets his former girlfriend Beata, who works as an interpreter, during negotiations with German and Polish industrialists. He would like to make friends with her again, but he doesn't know that Beata also works as a call girl with her friend Sonja - and that is precisely why his boss Klaus hired him for the evening negotiations.

Reviews

  • epd Film , August 2003: “Schmid looks at all his characters with a loving look, especially where they are hopelessly lost. What the characters fail each other, he gives them. (...) A carefully balanced image of the time between melodrama and social realism: the most haunting and most important German film in a long time. " In the following issue of September 2003, Lichter is film of the month: " Schmid manages a political upheaval situation with the existential needs and experiences of individuals To interweave people - without degrading these fates to mere examples of a historical moment. "
  • Lexicon of international film : “A brilliantly developed and staged inventory of German reality [...]. The proximity of the hand-held camera enables a sometimes painful immediacy, whereby the film maintains a fine balance between oppressive heaviness and lighter moments despite its realism. "
  • Cinema : "The laconic episode drama is one of the best that German film has to offer."
  • TV Today : “Schmid is a guarantee for first-class cinema. Short cuts on the EU's eastern border: a gripping, moving drama. "

Awards

The film won the German Film Prize in silver in 2003 and the Gilde Film Prize in silver in 2004 . At the 2003 Berlinale he won the FIPRESCI award . At the Filmkunstfest he won the Foundlings Prize . He also won the Bavarian Film Prize for best production and for best screenplay. The cameraman Bogumił Godfrejów was nominated for the European Film Award. In 2004, Lichter was awarded the German Critics' Prize. For the best editing , Hansjörg Weißbrich received both the Film + Schnitt Prize and the German Film Critics Prize .

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ epd film no. 8/2003, joint work of Evangelical Journalism, Frankfurt a. M., p. 38
  2. ↑ epd film No. 9/2003, joint work of Evangelical Journalism, Frankfurt a. M., p. 7
  3. ↑ lights. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 4, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used