Pelican blood
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Pelican blood |
| Country of production | Germany , Bulgaria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 121 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Katrin Gebbe |
| script | Katrin Gebbe |
| production |
Verena Gräfe-Höft , Mila Voinikova |
| music | Johannes Lehniger |
| camera | Moritz Schultheiss |
| cut | Heike Gnida |
| occupation | |
| |
Pelican Blood (international title: Pelican Blood ) is a feature film by Katrin Gebbe from the year 2019 . The German - Bulgarian co-production is the director's second feature film and tells the story of a single mother, played by Nina Hoss , who is ready to push the boundaries in order to save her adopted daughter.
The film premiered on August 28, 2019 during the 76th Venice International Film Festival , where it opened the Orizzonti subsidiary section . In Germany, Pelikanblut is to be shown for the first time on September 29, 2019 as part of the Hamburg Film Festival .
action
Wiebke lives with her 9-year-old adoptive daughter Nicolina on an idyllic horse farm. The horse trainer has a secret love affair with Benedict. After years of waiting, Wiebke adopts another girl, the 5-year-old Raya from Bulgaria, which makes Nicolina's wish for a sister come true. In the first few weeks the children get used to each other and there is harmony. A short time later, Wiebke notices that the initially charming and shy Raya is changing. She has difficulty accepting interpersonal rules and is unable to form emotional bonds. With her escalating behavior, Raya puts herself and others in danger, including Nicolina.
When a neurologist finds out that Raya will probably be ill all her life, it is up to Wiebke to decide whether to keep the girl with her. Wiebke begins a questionable treatment of Raya, who perceives her surroundings as crossing boundaries, including her lover Benedict. Obsessed with the idea of healing Raya, Wiebke isolates himself more and more. As the only solution, it seems to have to make an unusual sacrifice.
background
According to director Katrin Gebbe, who also wrote the script, Pelikanblut explores the “nightmare vision of parenthood”. The title refers to pelicans as a frequently used motif in Christian iconography . According to the early Christian animal compendium Physiologus , this animal opens its own breast with its beak. The blood that drips on the dead boy brings them back to life. This was allegorically related to the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ . For Gebbe, it is a metaphor for self-sacrificing love and faith. Wiebke, the main character of the film, also cut her own path of sacrifice in order to heal her emotionally "dead" child, according to the director.
At Pelican Blood is a production of SWR together with Verena Gräfe-Hoeft (Junafilm) and Mila Voinikova (Miramar film). The film was supported by the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein Film Funding with 550,000 euros , as well as by the BKM , the German Film Funding Fund and Eurimages .
The shooting took place in Bulgaria from August 13, 2018 to January 8, 2019, with the main shooting being scheduled until mid-October. As in her film debut Tore tanzt (2013), Gebbe worked with cameraman Moritz Schultheiß and editor Heike Gnida .
reception
At the opening of the Venice Film Festival, Andreas Borcholte ( Spiegel Online ) saw an “initially somewhat wooden homeland western” who, with “a lot of feeling for atmosphere and suspense [...] tipped into a horror film”. The critic highly praised the performance of Nina Hoss and Katerina Lipovska and wondered why Katrin Gebbe's film did not make it into the competition for the Golden Lion . As with her debut film Tore tanzt , Pelikanblut is also "about a character with a pronounced world- reforming or martyr complex ", stated Borcholte.
Andreas Busche ( Der Tagesspiegel ) came to the same conclusion as Borcholte that pelican blood should have belonged in the competition , who described the film as an “atmospherically oppressive mystery horror film”. He also praised the child actress Lipvoska for her "truly diabolical" acting as Raya. Even a week later, Gebbe's film, according to Busche, “still has an atmospheric effect”.
Dietmar Dath ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ) saw a "sometimes a bit bumpy, but strong film" and also praised the ambivalent play by Hoss, Lipovska and Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo. Pelican blood has "a few small construction dents , emotion dents and action cracks ". Dath found the topics "brain metabolism and developmental psychology" appearing in the film to be "quite annoying" and "intrusive", but Gebbe's work would be "well above the level at which any films about pain, guilt and self-sacrifice are constantly being made, not only in Germany ".
Tim Caspar Boehme ( the daily newspaper ) reviewed the film more critically , in which Gebbe moves “quite indecisively” between family dynamics and creeping horror. Although he saw Lipovska's portrayal of the Raya in particular as “impressive”, “the delayed development [...] is running out of breath until there is not much left”.
Awards
Pelikanblut was nominated for the Venice Horizon Award as part of its world premiere in the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival . At the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival , Pelikanblut was awarded the main prize for best film .
Katrin Gebbe's directorial work will be shown as part of the Hamburg Film Festival in the Große Freiheit section, where Pelikanblut has been nominated for the Hamburg Producer Award for German cinema productions. There the leading actress Nina Hoss will also be awarded the Douglas Sirk Prize .
Web links
- Pelican blood at filmportal.de
- Pelican blood at labiennale.org (English)
- Pelican Blood in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Pelican Blood" by Katrin Gebbe celebrates its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival . In: swr.de, July 25, 2019 (accessed August 27, 2019).
- ↑ a b c d Pelican blood . In: labiennale.org (accessed August 27, 2019).
- ↑ a b c Hamburg film team celebrates premiere in Venice : In: ndr.de, August 28, 2019 (accessed on August 28, 2019).
- ↑ a b c Shooting for the SWR cinema co-production "Pelikan Blut" Nina Hoss plays in the direction of Katrin Gebbe . In: pressportal.de, August 16, 2018 (accessed August 27, 2019).
- ↑ Pelican blood . In: filmportal.de (accessed on August 28, 2019).
- ↑ Borcholte, Andreas: Mama will do it . In: Spiegel Online, August 28, 2019 (accessed August 29, 2019).
- ↑ The subtle comedy “La verité” opens the Venice Film Festival . In: tagesspiegel.de, August 28, 2019 (accessed September 4, 2019).
- ↑ Good titles, bad titles . In: tagesspiegel.de, September 3, 2019 (accessed September 4, 2019).
- ↑ Dath, Dietmar: How to teach people feelings in the cinema . In: faz.net, August 29, 2019 (accessed August 29, 2019).
- ↑ Boehme, Tim Caspar: Delayed development . In: taz.de, August 28, 2019 (accessed August 29, 2019).
- ↑ Awards . In: imdb.com (accessed August 28, 2019).