Winter daughter
Winter's Daughter is a multi -award-winning family film that was shown for the first time on January 18, 2011 at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival . The film was released by Zorro Film and was shown in the cinema from October 20, 2011, where it was seen by 28,563 visitors (as of October 2013). He was first seen on television on November 9, 2013. The film is about twelve-year-old Kattaka who learns at Christmas that she has previously said dad to a man who is not her birth father. Together with her boyfriend Knäcke and her 75-year-old neighbor Lene, she travels to Poland, where her real father works as a sailor. The journey develops into a road trip that confronts both Kattaka and Lene with their past.
The film was produced by Schlicht und Griffend Film GmbH and Pokromski Studio in co-production with the ARD -Landesrundfunkanstalten Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg , Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , Bayerischer Rundfunk , Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Südwestrundfunk .
action
The twelve-year-old Kattaka is looking forward to Christmas with her father Daniel and her heavily pregnant mother Margarete. At the beginning of the film, the family and Kattaka's friend Knäcke and their neighbor Lene Graumann collect a Christmas tree. The 75-year-old neighbor is shown as a woman who speaks little and smokes a lot of cigarillos, often drives her old Barkas minibus and falls the tree.
While the presents were being given, Kattaka heard from a phone call that her biological father was not Daniel, but Alexej, a Russian seaman from Vladivostok . In doing so, she learns that this was not only kept secret from her parents, but also from her real father. She is so disappointed and angry about this that she decides to look for her father without talking to her mother and stepfather. After finding out that her father works on a container ship in Szczecin , she wants to meet him as soon as possible. The neighbor Lene offers to drive with her. Kattaka's mother and stepfather agree to the trip after realizing that otherwise they would lose their daughter.
After Lene and Kattaka had been on the road for several hours with the Barkas in the direction of Stettin, they noticed during a police check that Knäcke had hidden in the car to help with the search. They only arrive in Szczecin when the ship is already on its way to Gdansk . They decide to go after them.
The longer the three of them are traveling east, the more the children notice that Lene has a secret that has to do with a key that she wears on a necklace. Lene had lost her home in Masuria and her parents during the Second World War .
With the help of the young Pole Waldek and his grandfather, the three manage to see Alexej in Danzig. But Kattaka is too scared to speak to him and runs away. Then Kattaka persuades Lene to go to Masuria. On the farm, which Lene had to leave under dramatic circumstances in 1945, she can take off her necklace with the key and lock it with the past.
Towards the end of the film, Kattaka decides to see her father after all. Back in Danzig she meets him, who at first does not want to believe that he has a daughter, as well as her mother, who has meanwhile also arrived there, and her stepfather. While the two men are arguing, Margarete gives birth to a son in the medical room of the ship on which Alexej works.
background
Michaela Hinnenthal has been working on the manuscript for the film since 2002. This was made possible by the fact that she won a scholarship from the Academy for Children's Media in Erfurt in response to an advertisement. Your lecturer at the academy was Dieter Bongartz .
She also sees a piece of coming to terms with the past for herself and her family in the script. Her mother was expelled from Masuria in 1945.
music
The film music was recorded by the composer and musician Michael Heilrath and Katrin Mickiewicz , who had studied jazz composition, jazz singing and the viola . In the film, there are chamber music passages (mainly played with the viola), Polish hits, country songs, a pop rock song, purely electronic titles up to classic Christmas songs such as "Oh, Come, Little Children" or "Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming" diverse musical styles.
Reviews
“The rapprochement between the different characters reveals Johannes Schmid's keen sense for moods and, last but not least, convinces with the excellent interplay of the actors. Nina Monka plays the role of the defiant-headed and sensitive Kattaka with great naturalness, Leon Seidel demonstrates true sidekick qualities. And Ursula Werner (in her first movie after the great success of 'Cloud 9') is allowed to shine at the side of the children as a gruff old woman who wants to hide her deep inner pain from the world. "
“Winter Daughter is exciting entertainment for adults as well as for their children, a moving, sometimes funny drama, and simply a very good film. A road movie from Germany that discovers the vastness that Hollywood finds in the US West, between Gdansk and Stettin and on the Masurian Lake District. Who tells of history, suffering and memories, without a pedagogical finger and above all without a hidden political agenda, or even historical revisionist intentions. "
“An old cinematic virtue to do justice to the emotionality and development of the characters through movement through the narrative style of the road movie, this film follows in a modern way. What is striking here is the humorous and warm-hearted look at the figures and the charm in detail. The scenes are often funny thanks to wonderful dialogues. External obstacles that add to the tension are used in the cleverly developed script by Michaela Hinnenthal and Thomas Schmid only discreetly and in a balanced way. The staging, with all of the great cast members, may appear so round, not least because of the lack of (German) star cinema. "
“Schmid helps the melodrama, which has almost been forgotten in Germany, to create completely new tones. He also manages the difficult balance between cheerful irony and serious emotional upsurge so well that one would like to wish that somebody would soon entrust him with one of the great subjects of the genre, which are currently sunk into the daily soaps of German television so level . "
“Schmid packs a lot of material in› Winter Daughter ‹: father-daughter drama, road and buddy movie, the fate of the expellees and, on top of that, a subtly hinted at German-Polish love story. Some of it inevitably remains schematic. Nevertheless, Schmid has made a well-rounded youth film. Above all, the atmosphere is nice: gray-blue nights, creaking ships in Gdańsk's huge industrial harbor, long journeys through whitewashed avenues and, to top it off, a real storm. "
“Unfortunately, the script is one of the common rules in which the dialogues, especially those of the children, are too stilted and written to really establish a close relationship with the characters. But the music by Michael Heilrath and Katrin Mickiewicz creates such a beautiful, dreamy-sad atmosphere that you can safely neglect this shortcoming and get involved in Kattaka's little, quiet story - which shows that family dramas even without the usual television screams and torrents of tears can get by. "
Awards
- Five Lakes Film Festival , Starnberg: Young Generation Award (2011)
- Augsburg Children's Film Festival : Special recommendation, pine nut from the parents' jury (2011)
- Festival Goldener Spatz : Award of the MDR Broadcasting Council and the expert jury for the best screenplay (2011)
- International Children's Film Festival Chicago : Best Feature Film (Grand Prize of the Adult Jury) (2011)
- Kindertiger (screenplay award) from VISION KINO and KIKA for the best screenplay for a children's film (2012)
- German Film Award : Category Best Children's and Youth Film (2012)
Web links
- Wintertochter in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Winter daughter at filmportal.de
- Teaching materials for school classes on film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for winter daughter . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2011 (PDF; test number: 129 465 K).
- ↑ www.moviemaze.de (accessed on March 10, 2014)
- ↑ Winter Daughter. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on October 3, 2016 .
- ↑ lieblingsfilm.biz ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Press booklet for the film (accessed on March 10, 2014)
- ↑ http://programm.ard.de/ (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ Interview with Michaela Hinnenthal (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ www.digitalvd.de ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2014 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. (accessed on March 10, 2014)
- ↑ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ www.artechock.de (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ www.kino.de (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ a b www.filmernst.de (accessed on March 18, 2014)
- ↑ www.noz.de (accessed on March 18, 2014)
