Two Lives (2012)

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Movie
Original title Two lives
Two lives (film) logo.svg
Country of production Germany , Norway
original language German , Norwegian , English , Russian , Danish
Publishing year 2012
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Georg Maas ,
Judith Kaufmann
script Georg Maas,
Christoph Tölle ,
Ståle Stein Berg ,
Judith Kaufmann
production Axel Helgeland ,
Rudi Teichmann ,
Dieter Zeppenfeld
music Christoph M. Kaiser ,
Julian Maas
camera Judith Kaufmann
cut Hansjörg Weißbrich
occupation

Zwei Leben is a German - Norwegian film drama from 2012 that alludes to various real events. In it, director Georg Maas stages the adaptation of the then unpublished manuscript for the novel Eiszeiten by Hannelore Hippe . Zwei Leben premiered in Norway in October 2012, and appeared in Germany almost a year later. The film was submitted as a German entry for the Oscar , but was not included in the nominations for the category Best Foreign Language Film .

action

The couple Katrine and Bjarte Myrdal live happily together in a wooden house by a fjord near the Norwegian city of Bergen , together with their student daughter, who now has a baby, and her grandmother. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, however, things turned when a young lawyer from Germany showed up: According to them, Katrine is said to be the daughter of a German Wehrmacht soldier and a Norwegian who was kidnapped by the National Socialists from a Lebensborn home to Germany as a child of the occupation . At the age of 20, Katrine fled the GDR to Norway to look for her mother. The attorney now wants Katrine to testify as a witness at a hearing to get redress. However, she initially refuses, ostensibly to protect her mother Åse from renewed talk. The story of Katrine is told in flashbacks, in which the viewer realizes that her true identity is different and that she is more an accomplice than a victim.

background

Historical references

In the years 1940 to 1945, numerous Norwegian women had relationships with soldiers from Germany, from which it is estimated that around 11,000 to 12,000 children, so-called Tyskerbarna , emerged. Greeted by the National Socialists, the Schutzstaffel set up children's homes in order to “promote” the “Germanic inheritance”. Between 1943 and 1945, 250 of these children were deported from the homes to Germany in children's homes; most of them in today's Saxony. After the war, Norwegian mothers were often denigrated as so-called Tyskertøser .

The scriptwriters visited numerous people who had been abducted to Germany as children. Very few of them knew their birth parents; most of them grew up with foster parents or in children's homes in the GDR. Many found out that they had parents in Norway and wanted to travel to Norway when they came of age. However, the authorities obstructed the departure. When the Stasi found out about this, children were allowed into the West on the condition that they act as spies for them there.

In the 1960s and 1970s, GDR agents were smuggled from the east via Norway into the Federal Republic. The most famous case is the Ludwig Bergmann case. A spy named Hempel, disguised as a son, was smuggled into his family in Haugesund . Bergmann himself, who did not know his family, did not learn the story until he was almost 60 years old when he met relatives.

production

Juliane Koehler 2009

Zwei Leben was produced by Zinnober , B&T , Helgaland , ApolloMedia , Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen , FUZZ and ARD Degeto . While it is being marketed in German cinemas by color film rental , it is distributed worldwide by Beta Cinema . It was shot in Germany in Bonn , Leipzig , Halle and in Norway in Bergen. Two Lives was filmed with the Arri Alexa . The post-production was carried out in Atlantik Film Hamburg .

The main actress Juliane Köhler was enthusiastic about the script and for this reason decided to participate in the film. Then she worked to ensure that Two Lives actually came about and learned the Norwegian language for it . The film is based on the novel manuscript Eiszeiten by Hannelore Hippe , in which, among other things, the puzzling Norwegian criminal case of the so-called Isdal woman and the fate of occupation and Wehrmacht children in Norway were dealt with.

publication

Two Lives premiered in Norway on October 19, 2012. On January 7, 2013, it was first shown in the United States at the Palm Springs International Film Festival . The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19th . The German premiere took place on September 19, 2013.

reception

The German Film and Media Assessment gave the film a particularly valuable rating , praised the actors and also wrote: "Every minute the viewer feels the clever structure of the script and the extensive factual research in the background". The tension and the music were also praised. In conclusion, the film was described as "a clever and excitingly narrated drama and an important plea for dealing with the story".

Although the comedy Oh Boy was a favorite to be nominated for an Oscar in the category of best foreign language film , the German jury surprisingly decided to nominate Zwei Leben . The user rating of the Internet Movie Database came on December 24, 2013 to an average of 7.2 out of 10 possible stars.

Christian Buß compared Zwei Leben with the film drama The Lives of Others in Spiegel Online and found that “despite the thematic proximity”, Zwei Leben “in its staging and its grim socio-political thrust could not be further from 'The Lives of Others'”. The director “created a labyrinthine contemporary history drama with 'Two Lives'”, which is characterized by “leaps in time, a change of identity, conspiracy scenarios that are difficult to understand”: “The viewer has to come to terms with remaining in the dark for long stretches. Identifying with the main character, that doesn't make things any easier, is difficult: You can suffer with her because of her obvious turmoil - but you can't trust her. ”Buß also noted that the film had“ [e] in [en] monstrous [n] material - and yet it [was] made for an international audience. "

In an article from Die Zeit , the author writes that the film provides “unequivocally renewed evidence that reality writes the most monstrous stories, but the historical material that director Georg Maas unravels in his drama is so tricky that the film is probably not only among foreign moviegoers some 'Huh?' "The script [...] when attempting to interlink the legacy of the Third Reich with Stasi crimes and a political thriller with a family drama was bumpy." In addition, "clues [...] were raised and quietly dropped." "So that there is a lack of" credibility ".

Rainer Gansera from the Süddeutsche Zeitung compared the film with a work by William Shakespeare and recognized the “best scenes” of the film when asked whether “the trust that people place in one another every day must be a bulwark against all challenges”. The story is an "exciting agent thriller, plus a family drama with a historical examination of conscience".

Awards

The film received numerous awards and nominations:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for two lives . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2013 (PDF; test number: 137 576 K).
  2. ↑ a b Rainer Gansera: Vanishing point Norway in süddeutsche.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  3. ↑ Content in zweileben-film.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b German Vergangenheitsbewältigung the fjord p 1 in zeit.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  5. ↑ a b German Vergangenheitsbewältigung the fjord p 2 in zeit.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  6. ↑ a b c historical background in zweileben-film.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  7. ^ Company Credits in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  8. ↑ Filming Locations in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  9. ↑ Technical Specifications in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  10. ↑ Interviews in zweileben-film.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  11. ↑ Beate Rottgard: Premiere in Bergen, Norway. In: ruhrnachrichten.de . November 13, 2012, accessed November 18, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Release info in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  13. ↑ German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awards the award: Drama, Predicate Particularly Valuable ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2013 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. in zweileben-film.de . Retrieved December 24, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zweileben-film.de
  14. ↑ “Two Lives” goes into the Oscar race - “Oh Boy” is not in Focus . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  15. ^ Two Lives (2012) in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  16. ↑ Christian Buß : German Oscar candidate "Two Lives": The enemy in your family in Spiegel Online . Retrieved December 24, 2013
  17. ^ Awards in Internet Movie Database . Retrieved December 24, 2013