Night before your eyes

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Movie
Original title Night before your eyes
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2008
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Brigitte Bertele
script Johanna Stuttmann
production Didi Danquart ,
Boris Michalski
music Christian Biegai
camera Mathias Prause
cut Stephan Krumbiegel
occupation

Nacht vor Augen is a German feature film from 2008. It deals with the fictional story of a young Bundeswehr soldier who returns to his home village traumatized from an Afghanistan mission and can no longer find his way around in civilian life. The film was made as part of the SWR series Debut in the Third (TV first broadcast on October 19, 2009) and was also the graduation film for the director Brigitte Bertele and the screenwriter Johanna Stuttmann at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy . It premiered on February 9, 2008 as part of the International Forum for New Cinema at the Berlinale , and since then the film has been shown at numerous festivals in various countries. Most of the critics were impressed. The director, screenwriter and co-star Hanno Koffler have won several awards, including received Hero's Welcome the First Steps Award and the Prize of the German Film Critics in 2008 as the best feature film debut.

action

The 25-year-old contract soldier David Kleinschmidt is returning to civilian life after an assignment abroad in Afghanistan. He does not want to see a certain incident from his service time investigated and refuses to attend a returnees seminar or a psychologist offered by the Bundeswehr. In his hometown in the northern Black Forest , his girlfriend Kirsten is waiting for him in a newly furnished, shared apartment and is looking forward to being together. But David has changed. He is closed and dismissive, he cannot stand intimacy, always reacts frightfully and with outbursts of anger. At night he secretly washes his bedclothes and underwear because he has become a bed wetter .

David resumes his previous work as a paramedic . His friend Felix is ​​now his boss. David soon learns from his superior in the Bundeswehr how the ominous incident should be treated: David receives a medal for having shot an assassin in self-defense. However, he should keep quiet about it. Through an indiscretion, David is made a hero in the local newspaper. At a welcome party with friends and family, he shows photos from Afghanistan. The visitors react disturbed and overwhelmed to his pictures of mutilated people and corpses. David becomes increasingly isolated. He also casts off the home visit of the Bundeswehr psychologist.

David now spends most of his time with his eight-year-old, shy half-brother Benni. Since he is teased and tormented by his classmates, David wants to teach him strength and toughness. The games and tests of courage are becoming more and more violent, David is above all aggressive towards himself. Benni soon becomes noticeable for his part by wetting the bed.

David can no longer maintain the heroic legend surrounding him. He tells Kirsten, who is more and more desperate about him, and his closest friends that he shot a little boy in Afghanistan without need, which is now following him. His friends are again overwhelmed with the drastic.

Felix soon takes care of Kirsten, whom David scares off with his outbursts of anger. A playmate of Bennis is seriously injured when he deliberately leads him wrongly during a test of courage in the forest. David, who had already got Benni to slay his injured, beloved rabbit, takes a pistol and goes with Benni into the forest, where he tells the boy to shoot him as a test of courage. Benni cannot withstand the situation and flees.

When David, who has meanwhile also lost his job, is noticed as a spectator of a soccer game by aggressive shouting, Kirsten calls the police for help, who overwhelms him. Under this pressure, he finally shows himself ready to voluntarily go to a clinic for therapy. After a long time, he returns to Kirsten, Benni and his family, who have also matured, as a person who has changed again and is still under medication.

background

A bathing scene was filmed at the upper basin of the Glems pumped storage plant near Reutlingen

The starting point for the creation of the script was the author's observation in 2000 that an acquaintance who had served as a soldier in Kosovo had come back completely changed physically and mentally. Johanna Stuttmann's research began in 2005 and aimed at a representation that was as realistic and authentic as possible. They included interviews with soldiers who were in Afghanistan, with their relatives and with psychologists specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder .

Night before eyes is a coproduction between Didi Danquart's Karlsruhe company Noirfilm and Südwestrundfunk . The MFG Film Funding Baden-Württemberg supported the project as part of the Fifty-Fifty -Programms, equal pay the costs at the MFP and the producing stations, with the allowable maximum of 400,000 euros as production funding. The shooting took place in August and September 2007 in Bad Liebenzell and the surrounding area, including Maisenbach-Zainen and in the Monbachtal. The barracks photos were taken in the Calw District Office . Filming locations such as a concrete storage lake as a bathing area, a gloomy forest or tracks ending at a barred tunnel entrance support the oppressive atmosphere of the film. Due to the low budget, planned scenes that were supposed to show David's therapy in more detail had to be omitted, which is only indicated in the film by taking medication.

Parallel to Nacht vor Augen , the co-producer SWR and another editorial team developed another film that deals with the same topic with a similar script. The film Welcome home with Ken Duken as a soldier returning from Afghanistan was broadcast on the evening program of ARD on February 2, 2009.

Night before eyes is sold internationally under the title A Hero's Welcome .

Reviews

For ZDF Aspects , Nacht vor Augen is one of the films that “come along quietly, but hit the viewer directly and keep them busy beyond the festival. [...] An impressive film that shows with shocking clarity that the war will go on for a long time in the minds of soldiers. "

Carolin Ströbele writes in the time of 14 February 2008, the author Johanna Stuttmann have a "very intelligent screenplay written" that Brigitte Bertele "just filmed so prudently" have. And further: “The director has also made a good choice with her main actor: Hanno Koffler, previously known mainly from German coming-of-age films , has matured into a character actor in German films with this role of David. He embodies the returnees as a man who can only compensate for his emotional pain with physical pain. "

Eberhard von Elterlein calls the film a “strong returnees drama” in the world of February 12, 2008 : “Of course, [Brigitte] Bertele saw all the Vietnam homecoming films like“ The Deer Hunter ”and“ Coming Home ” before her debut film - and actually created something like a German counterpart: It shows credibly how big politics eats its way into small heads, David returns as a zombie from a war that nobody understands. "

Christiane Peitz writes in the Tagesspiegel Berlinale special on February 11, 2008: “A traumatized war returnee with naive parents, innocent girlfriend, well-meaning pals: explosive material for a contemporary German drama, even if some things seem constructed and stiff in“ night before eyes ”. The debut devised by two women [...] is nevertheless remarkable, because of the obvious ambivalence of so-called peace operations and the careful observation of a man in crisis: the macho as bed-wetter, acts of violence against fear, auto-aggression instead of therapy. "

Hans-Jörg Rother in the FAZ on February 11, 2008 on “Brigitte Maria Bertele's disturbing debut” : “Hanno Koffler as an aggressively charged bed-wetter, driven by his nightmares, who throws the psychologist out without further ado, there are always moments that make him feel sorry for him Wake up those thrown on the train. "

For DW-TV Kino - Das Deutsche Filmmagazin on October 24, 2008, the film is "Psychologically impressive and convincingly played" .

Tilmann P. Gangloff compares Night Before Eyes with Welcome Home , the SWR television film on the same topic: “Hanno Koffler portrays the traumatized soldier in a completely different way than Ken Duken's very similar role in" Welcome Home ", but embodies the psychological damage no less urgent. Bertele and Stuttmann, too, in their film, staged with manageable optical effort and correspondingly long shots, only gradually reveal what really happened in Afghanistan. The reflection of the trauma in the little boy, on the other hand, is a dramatically most significant difference; and the realization that the award for David, who is celebrated as a hero in the local press, is pure mockery, a bitter resolution. "

The lexicon of international films judges: “An emotionally charged drama that, after a bumpy start, is increasingly gaining credibility. The convincing actor conveys the emotional needs of his character intensively. "

Awards

Brigitte Bertele (left) and Johanna Stuttmann during a panel discussion on the film

Representation of the Bundeswehr

The usual way of wearing the beret in the Bundeswehr

Despite the expressed effort to be authentic in Hero's Welcome the operations in the army in detail shown only limited realistic. In the film, David receives the silver medal for allegedly preventing an assassination attempt. The Bundeswehr actually awards this medal solely on the basis of the number of days spent abroad. Sergeant Major Kleiber wears a beret in his office , which violates the service regulations of the Bundeswehr : The headgear must be removed in closed rooms. The shown horizontal way of carrying does not correspond to the Bundeswehr standard, which provides for a beret hanging to the right.

FAZ editor Stephan Löwenstein, an expert on defense policy, judges in his blog Zur Sicherheit of June 25, 2009 , because of the sometimes grotesque exaggerations and "script weaknesses" as "downright defamatory in the representation of the Bundeswehr" .

The presentation of the film at the Berlinale 2008 encouraged an employee of the Catholic Military Bishop's Office of the German Armed Forces to initiate the Internet platform Attack on the Soul , which wants to help active and former soldiers and their relatives affected by post- traumatic stress disorders and from Reinhold Robbe, the former Federal Armed Forces Commissioner is supported.

literature

  • Johanna Stuttmann: Night before Eyes: A script . Ed .: Fred Breinersdorfer and Dorothee Schön for the German Film Academy. Pro Business, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86805-363-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ania Mauruschat in an interview with Johanna Stuttmann: The suffering of those returning from war - a film about German soldiers in Afghanistan. In: Jetzt.de. March 25, 2008, accessed July 2, 2009 .
  2. ↑ Fifty-Fifty. (No longer available online.) MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg, formerly in the original ; Retrieved August 7, 2009 .  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.mfg.de  
  3. ↑ Funded projects from the second session in 2007. (No longer available online.) MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg, formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 2, 2009 .  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.mfg.de  
  4. ^ "Night before eyes": film set in Calw. Schwarzwaelder-bote.de of August 24, 2007
  5. ^ Johanna Stuttmann and Brigitte Bertele in a public film talk at the municipal cinema in Freiburg on June 29, 2009
  6. ↑ The fight continues. Taz.de from February 1, 2009
  7. ↑ A Hero's Welcome ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at EastWest Filmdistribution, accessed July 22, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eastwest-distribution.com
  8. ^ ZDF Aspects of February 15, 2008
  9. ↑ Rocky Kabul , online version
  10. ↑ Night Before Eyes - Strong Returnees Drama , Online Version
  11. ↑ Berlinale Special, Brotherly Love , online version
  12. ↑ Hans-Jörg Rother: The truth comes out at the beer table. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / Sunday newspaper. February 11, 2008, p. 35 , accessed July 2, 2009 .
  13. ↑ Video
  14. ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff : TV tip of the day: "Night before eyes" (ARD). In: evangelisch.de . Retrieved September 14, 2010.
  15. ↑ Night before eyes in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used , accessed on July 22, 2011
  16. ↑ a b c First Steps: Film info Nacht vor Augen , accessed on September 29, 2012
  17. ↑ Pre-selection for the German Film Prize 2009 ( Memento of the original from June 29, 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. (PDF, 292 kB), accessed on August 19, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutsche-filmakademie.de
  18. ↑ Bundeswehr.de: Decoration of Honor and Mission Medal ( Memento from May 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Stephan Löwenstein: flaps before eyes. (No longer available online.) In: FAZ-Blogs. June 25, 2009, archived from the original on June 27, 2009 ; Retrieved July 6, 2009 . 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 / faz-community.faz.net
  20. ↑ Initiative attack on the soul
  21. ↑ Claudia Heine: Cracking the hard shell. (No longer available online.) In: Das Parlament 08/2009. February 16, 2009, archived from the original on July 22, 2009 ; Retrieved July 10, 2009 . 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 / www.bundestag.de