Wolf Children (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Wolf children |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rick Ostermann |
| script | Rick Ostermann |
| production |
Rüdiger Heinze Stefan Sporbert |
| music |
Christoph Emperor Julian Maas |
| camera | Leah Striker |
| cut |
Stefan Blau Antje Lass |
| occupation | |
| |
Wolfskinder is a German feature film from 2013 . Rick Ostermann directed and wrote the script for the film, which was shot in the Baltic States . The Zum Goldenen Lamm Filmproduktion produced the historical drama , supported by the Hessian Radio, ARTE and the Film Fund Baden-Wuerttemberg. The main roles were played by Levin Liam and Helena Phil . Wolfskinder had its world premiere at the 70th Venice International Film Festival . There he ran in the side row Orizzonti. The German premiere in cinemas took place on August 28, 2014 and May 9, 2014 at the Neisse Film Festival in Großhennersdorf .
The film tells the escape of a group of German children who changed several times and tried to get to safety from Russian soldiers after the end of the Second World War . The plot of the film is deliberately designed in such a way that the viewer neither gets an overview of the distance covered by the children, nor of the time that has passed.
action
East Prussia , summer 1946: The mother of Hans (14 years) and his little brother Fritzchen (9 years) die of hunger and deprivation. Lying dying, she asks her sons to always remember their origins and their names, and to find a farm together in Lithuania that they have already visited as a family. She warns Hans, who doubts that he will be able to do this without her, to cross the Memel and then remember the way. She also gives him an amulet with the photos of his parents so that they can show the farmers who they are and would be accepted. When the mother dies shortly afterwards, an odyssey begins for the two boys in which they meet other refugee children several times and lose again.
When they arrive at the Memel, they see a dead woman lying next to a ruined boat on the bank. Hans wants to follow the bank until there is a safe way to cross it, as his little brother cannot swim. But at the same moment two girls, Christel and the younger Ruth, followed by soldiers, run screaming out of the forest straight towards them and plunge into the water. When Hans realizes the danger, he also runs into the water with Fritzchen, takes him to a larger piece of wood, admonishes him to cling to it and pushes him into the river. When the soldiers start shooting at the children, Fritzchen is caught in the current and quickly driven downwards. The soldiers don't pay any attention to him, but shoot Hans and the two girls, who are trying to get away from the bank as quickly as possible to safety. While Ruth is hit and dies, Christel and Hans reach the opposite bank and Hans can only see his brother disappear in the distance.
When they quickly move away from the bank, Luise and her younger brother Karl meet them in the forest. When warned that the river was in danger from soldiers, they replied that they had to go there to meet their aunt. Assuming that it might be the dead woman on the other bank, and to protect her from the sight of her and the danger posed by soldiers, Christel convinces the two that no one is waiting for them there and that they should come with them.
On their escape, the group, which now consists of Hans, Christel, Luise and Karl, comes across a small farm. When Karl goes through a fence to organize something to eat, the children are discovered by the farmer. He sets his dog on her and Karl is bitten on the leg. In the course of the following days he can walk worse and worse because of his injury and Hans decides that they have to put him somewhere. When they see a farmer on a horse-drawn cart shortly afterwards, Hans offers the farmer Karl for a few apples and Luise has to watch her little brother drive away on the cart.
One day when Hans is wading around alone in a swamp, he discovers little Paul there, who only wears stockings on his feet and whom you never hear a word speak. Hans carries him out of the swamp to the other two and from then on the four of them hike on again, with Paul being carried by Hans most of the time because of the missing shoes.
During a boisterous swim in a lake, the children notice too late that Lithuanian partisans discover them and meet them on the shore. The partisans feed the children and take them to their camp in the forest. When the children are sleeping, one of the men tries to rape Christel. When he tampered with her clothes, the situation escalated: Christel wakes up from the touch, is frightened by the man bent over her and pulls her pocket knife to defend herself. The man then becomes aggressive and a scramble over the knife begins, from which Hans wakes up. He takes a rifle lying around and fires a shot. But soldiers who happen to be in the vicinity hear it, which ends in a wild shooting between the partisans and the Red Army. The four children manage to escape unscathed, and they are joined by the mute Russian boy Alexej, whom they met in the camp.
The group now consists of Hans, Christel, Luise and the mute boys Paul and Alexej, and they meet again on a farm. This time Hans orders the two girls to wait for them on the way while he explores the area with the other two boys. He discovers three bodies in the garden in front of the farmhouse and runs back to the path with the other two in disgust - but the two girls have disappeared. Even before they can look for them, Alexej hears cars coming, realizes that they belong to the Red Army , and the three of them have to flee. They escape to a swampy reed area, pursued by Russian soldiers. When Alexej has a coughing fit and is unable to suppress it, Hans covers his mouth and nose. When he risks loosening his grip, Alexei is lifeless, so he and Paul leave him behind in the reeds when the soldiers are gone.
From now on, only Hans and Paul continue to travel together. When they find food and shelter in a fisherman's hut and are discovered by the returning fisherman, Paul stays with him and Hans moves on alone.
Eventually, and by chance, Hans found his brother Fritzchen in Lithuania, but he had learned Lithuanian in the meantime and got used to living with a Lithuanian peasant couple. To protect himself, the couple had given him the name Jonas, and he would finally be fed up with them every day, but they would only take in one child - Hans would have to move on alone. Hans tries everything to get his brother to live together again from now on, as instructed by his mother. He shows him the amulet, reminds him of the farm they are supposed to be looking for, of the mother's reminder to always remember their origins and their names, and he, Hans Uwe Arendt, would obey. At that moment soldiers arrive at the court and Fritzchen runs out of the barn in which he was hiding his brother. The soldiers look at Fritzchen skeptically and speak to him. But with his knowledge he understands that they ask for his name, he only briefly replies "Jonas" in order not to give himself away with an accent , and they let go of him and continue to the barn from which he came. Shortly afterwards he hears a shot from there. He tries hard not to show his concern for his brother, but then sees them carry a dead pig out to their vehicle. He runs into the barn and his brother has left, but he still finds the amulet where the two had just been talking.
The film ends with short shots that indicate Hans’s future path.
Reviews
“They will comfort each other and help each other in the midst of a landscape that is a deceptive idyll. The beauty of nature, which director Rick Ostermann captures in poetic images, seems like a contradiction in a story that is about bare survival. But it is precisely these images that reflect the innocence and the unspoiled nature of children. A strong debut, the disturbing intensity of which has a long lasting effect. "
“Children's existential fear resists the spoken word. Instead, the filthy faces and sinewy bodies of Levin Liam and Patrick Lorenczat speak volumes as Hans and Fritzchen, together with the young actors of the other children who find themselves on the run and lose again. "
“One of Wolfskinder's great strengths is his speechlessness. In many places the children who help each other to escape remain silent. That is an advantage at the acting level. And it reduces the psychological burden of the already clumsy material. He who is silent cannot say anything wrong. "
“Similar to remembering, key moments are strung together, with some exaggerated and others deliberately kept laconic: separations without saying goodbye, corpses lying around, shots for no reason. Then there are the beguiling nature shots, which are suitable to arouse tourist interest. On the one hand, this film strives for aesthetics, general validity and symbolism, and on the other hand, it claims authenticity. "
Awards
On July 3, 2014 in Munich , Rick Ostermann received the National Young Talent Award of the Peace Prize of German Films for Wolfskinder .
Trivia
Ruth is named Ruth in the film and in the end credits, but Rath in the official cast list.
Luise is mentioned in the film and in its official school material, but Asta in the official cast list and in the trailer.
Web links
- Wolf Children in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Wolfskinder - the film
- Wolfskinder-Geschichtsverein eV - film Wolfskinder
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfskinder movie ( German ) Retrieved September 25, 2015.
- ↑ Feature film competition 2014 , Wolfskinder at the Neisse Film Festival.
- ↑ a b Wolfskinder (PDF) Port au Prince Pictures GmbH. Archived from the original on May 18, 2016. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
- ↑ Jörg Albrecht: Star Wars on Ecstasy and the forests of East Prussia. Deutschlandfunk, accessed on September 25, 2015 .
- ↑ Anke Sterneborg: Children, released for hunting with rifles. Die Welt, accessed September 25, 2015 .
- ^ Frédéric Jaeger: Wolf children. critic.de, accessed on September 25, 2015 .
- ↑ Ulrich Seidler: Abandoned in a foreign country. Frankfurter Rundschau, accessed on September 25, 2015 .
- ^ Ceremonial awarding of the Peace Prize of German Films - Die Brücke - 2014 on Thursday, July 3, 2014 in Munich ( German ). Accessed on September 25, 2015.