Yelling To The Sky
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Yelling To The Sky |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2011 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Victoria Mahoney |
| script | Victoria Mahoney |
| production |
Ged Dickersin Diane Houslin Victoria Mahoney Billy Mulligan |
| music | David Wittman |
| camera | Reed Morano |
| cut | William Henry |
| occupation | |
| |
Yelling To The Sky ( German "Schrei zum Himmel" ) is the feature film debut of the American director and screenwriter Victoria Mahoney from 2011 . The film drama is set in an American neighborhood with social problems and tells the story of Sweetness O'Hara, played by Zoë Kravitz , who first becomes a victim of bullying and violence and then herself a perpetrator and dealer. In the end, however, she finds her way back on the right path. The film Yelling To The Sky is the first film and screenplay by Victoria Mahoney, who previously worked as an actress. Yelling To The Sky premiered in the competition at the 61st Berlinale in February 2011 and was also a cross-section film in the Generation festival section, in which films for children and young people are presented.
action
Seventeen-year-old Sweetness O'Hara lives with her older, pregnant sister, her alcoholic father with Irish roots and her African-American mother, who keeps disappearing for long periods of time, in an American neighborhood with social problems that is predominantly inhabited by African-Americans. She becomes the victim of bullying and violence. When the clique around Latonya Williams tries to steal her bike and physically attacks her, she is rescued by her sister Ola. After a heated argument between her father Gordon and her mother Lorene, Ola and the mother leave the house and Sweetness is left with her father. She turns to the dealer Roland, who is supposed to help her, and starts dealing in drugs. This is how her criminal career begins. Latonya's two friends, Fatima and Jojo, who have attacked her so far, run over to Sweetness and help her, for example, to steal jeans and sweaters, which they then sell on the street. Finally, Sweetness takes revenge on Latonya by beating her in front of her classmates in the school hall. Meanwhile, Ola returns to the house with her baby and mother. Sweetness is helping Roland more and more with his drug deals and is present when he is shot one afternoon while playing with her and her friends on a sports field. This loss throws Sweetness even further. That evening she goes to a party where she consumes cocaine with the tutor Coleman . On the way home, she wrecks her sister's car. After this incident, her father finally takes responsibility for Sweetness. He follows her on the street and prevents her from further criminal acts. At the end of the film, she and her father speak out. She also asks the teacher Coleman for help in getting accepted at a college in order to get better future prospects in the future.
background
Yelling To The Sky is Victoria Mahoney's feature film debut as a director , screenwriter and film producer . She had attended Sundance Institute directing and screenwriting workshops and previously directed two short films, Sisters and Graduation, and the 2006 documentary Rare Birds . In 2010 Filmmaker Magazine named Mahoney among the 25 new faces in independent film . The cast of the film was chosen top-class. Zoë Kravitz , the daughter of Lenny Kravitz in the role of Sweetness O'Hara, is one of the most acclaimed young actresses in the USA, Gabourey Sidibe in the role of Latonya Williams was last year for her role in Precious - Life is Precious for the Oscar nominated for best leading actress. Mahoney often worked with the wrong connections, time leaps, black fades and association montages in the cinematic implementation, which should give the film a modern visual language. This was also underlined by the soundtrack dominated by rock music and hip-hop , which changes by leaps and bounds at crucial moments.
Reviews
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Yelling To The Sky received mostly poor reviews. Jens Balzer , who reviewed the film for the Berliner Zeitung , criticized the fact that Mahoney couldn't decide whether she wanted to make an art film or a coherent development story; her stylistic devices would appear clichéd and uncoordinated. His criticism culminates in the statement: “In the end, neither does one know why one should be interested in the fate of these girls. This film is as helpless as its heroines when it comes to expressing themselves and generating real feelings. ” Daniel Erk saw the film for Die Zeit and panned it as well. For Erk, the film Yelling To The Sky has the typical elements of a social drama, but would be “an unmotivated mixture of genre set pieces in the style of a high school soap opera”. He saw the film, also because of the cast Gabourey Sidibe from the award-winning Precious - Life is Precious , as an over-ambitious attempt to follow in the footsteps of this film. Daniel Sander, who reviewed the film for the Berlinale blog on Spiegel Online , saw a “powerful, energetic film debut”, but the quality of the two-dimensional figures is disturbed. He emphasized that the development of the characters was difficult to understand for the audience. Julian Hanich also took up this criticism in the Tagesspiegel . He put this criticism in a nutshell: “After about 45 minutes, Sweetness goes through a change from being beaten to being a tough street girl, which turns out so abruptly that, with the best will in the world, she doesn't communicate. And in the end the character of the father undergoes a turn from creep to litter, the motivation of which remains completely incomprehensible. ”However, he saw the film in its best moments in the tradition of the films of Larry Clark or Gus Van Sant .
literature
Web links
- Data sheet (PDF; 177 kB) on Yelling To The Sky at berlinale.de
- Yelling to the Sky in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Berlinale 10-20 FEB 11 . Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin 2011, p. 41.
- ↑ a b Jens Balzer: 17 years old, black hair . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 14, 2011.
- ^ Daniel Erk: Film "Yelling To The Sky" - social drama as a soap opera . In: Zeit Online , accessed February 16, 2011.
- ^ Daniel Sander: Berlinale blog . Spiegel Online , accessed February 16, 2011.
- ^ Julian Hanich: Competition: Sweet Seventeen . In: Der Tagesspiegel , accessed February 16, 2011.