The city below you

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Movie
Original title The city below you
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2010
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Christoph Hochhäusler
script Ulrich Peltzer ,
Christoph Hochhäusler
production Bettina Brokemper
music Benedict slate
camera Bernhard Keller
cut Stefan Stabenow
occupation

Unter dir die Stadt is a German feature film by the director Christoph Hochhäusler from 2010. It premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard series and was shown in German cinemas on March 31, 2011.

action

The Steve couple move to Frankfurt am Main because he has accepted a job as an investment banker there. His wife Svenja is looking for a job as a picture editor. She feels a stranger in the new city and increasingly also in her husband's life. She is bored and not much with herself. This makes it very easy to influence.

In this mood, she meets the boss of her husband Roland Cordes, who has just been voted Banker of the Year. He has to cover up the murder of an employee in Indonesia and prepare to take over a large corporation. He manages all of this effortlessly. In order to cope with the emotional stress, he watches junkies who are being paid for by his chauffeur.

Roland Cordes, like Svenja Steve, is looking for a feeling. They meet and believe that the other can give them this feeling. Cordes puts Svenja's husband in a life-threatening position in Indonesia, clearing the way for his affair with Svenja. It is a well-practiced behavior to remove obstacles from the way. A cowardice that Svenja resented when she found out and therefore parted with him.

The whole situation awakens the missing feelings in Roland Cordes, which he cannot cope with because he has no way of dealing with them. At the same time, the banking system is getting completely out of hand. After an attack on a journalist, it is said that Roland Cordes is running amok.

The development of the story reaches its climax when a disappointed employee discovered Cordes and Steve by chance during one of their sex meetings in the hotel and made the affair public.

Cordes emotional world remains opaque. He seems initially unimpressed when Svenja Steve dumps him, but does not deny the affair to his wife Claudia. Instead, he separates from her and tries to win Svenja back. He gives up his post on the board.

At the end of the film, Svenja Steve and Roland Cordes are sleeping in the bed of a hotel room. Svenja wakes up, gets up and looks out the window. Panicked people in office clothes and with briefcases are running around on the street. Svenja looks at the bed and just says: "It starts".

background

The shooting took place from August 26th to September 26th, 2009 in Frankfurt am Main and Cologne . The project received funding from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW , the Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) and the German Filmförderfonds (DFFF).

By the end of 2011, there had been a good 14,000 moviegoers in Germany, 8,000 in France and 3,600 in the Netherlands. The TV premiere was on November 11, 2012 in the program of the station arte , which, like WDR, was involved in the production.

Reviews

“The drama, loosely based on the biblical story of David and Bathsheba , portrays people in the Frankfurt high finance environment whose self-construction encompasses all areas of life, from power to their own biography to love. Rich in detail and realistic in its milieu drawing, the film creates the intense image of a sphere whose residents have lost their connection to reality in the course of their permanent 'self-performance'. "

- Lexicon of international film

“The city below you is an unusual, disturbing film. Imperceptibly it develops a suction effect that increases until the last scene. And in this Hochhäusler lets the story begin all over again in the mind of the viewer. "

- Carolin Ströbele : The time

“Christoph Hochhäusler believes that he can best make the human instinct of self-destruction visible where - at least apparently - there is most to be lost. Namely, where everything has already been achieved: In the executive floor, above the city. With this setup, of course, it is not far from that of classic tragedy. With the important difference, however, that with Hochhäusler, hubris does not cause the decline, but the fall is conjured up by the characters themselves and is definitely desired. "

- Felix von Boehm : critic.de

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for the city under you . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2011 (PDF; test number: 126 965 K).
  2. ↑ Unter dir die Stadt at filmportal.de , accessed on December 24, 2012
  3. ↑ Below you the city in the LUMIERE database, accessed on December 24, 2012
  4. ↑ The city below you. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Carolin Ströbele: The last tango in Frankfurt. In: The time of March 30, 2011
  6. ↑ Felix von Boehm: Below you the city. on critic.de on May 17, 2010