with an exciting move uptown to its new venue The Landmark at 57 West!
KINO! is back and ready to deliver exciting new German films to New York audiences this April. After more than 30 years at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the festival branched out into an independent film festival beginning in 2014. Now in its 5th year, KINO!2018 will continue to showcase the vast diversity within contemporary German cinema with a range of compelling, cutting-edge and acclaimed films. This year’s KINO!2018 will be held at the festival’s new venue and NYC’s newest arthouse cinema, the Landmark Theatres at 57th Street (657 W. 57th Street @ 12th Ave), from April 6th - 12th.
KINO!2018 will present a stellar selection of nine feature-length German films including: IN TIMES OF FADING LIGHT (NY premiere), WHEN PAUL CAME OVER THE SEA (North American premiere), CASTING (East Coast premiere), THE FINAL JOURNEY (NY premiere), BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN (NY premiere), THE GARDEN (NY premiere), THE IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE (North American premiere), HAGAZUSSA – A HEATHEN’S CURSE (Manhattan premiere); the North American premiere of the hit German TV series BAD BANKS (following its recent Berlin International Film Festival premiere!), and eleven short films as part of their annual NEXT GENERATION SHORT TIGER line-up (which presents a selection of shorts made by German film students and premieres every year at Cannes).
As a special KINO! Centerpiece event for cinephiles, on Monday, April 8th at 8pm, the festival will screen the US premiere of Ewald André Dupont’s 1925 classic silent film VARIETÉ (presented by Bertelsmann) accompanied with live music by pianist Stephen Horne, who is considered one of the leading silent film accompanists in the world, and composer / improviser / vibraphone player & percussionist Martin Pyne.
The festival’s Opening Night selection IN TIMES OF FADING LIGHT (Berlinale 2017, 100 minutes) will have its NY premiere on Friday, April 6th at 7:15pm and will be followed by a Q&A discussion with the film’s director Matti Geschonneck. A historical drama that takes place just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film centers around the 90th birthday party for an East German family’s Communist patriarch. Adapted from Eugen Ruge’s semi-autobiographical 2011 bestseller and starring the brilliant Bruno Ganz (Downfall), the film is a snapshot in time of the disintegration of a family and of a political system. Additional screening on Saturday, April 7th at 1pm.
On Saturday, April 7th at 8:30pm, the festival will premiere the first two episodes of the thrilling new female-driven German TV series BAD BANKS (104 minutes), which takes a fascinating look behind the scenes of both the seedy underbelly and the sleek executive prestige of international finance. Starring the amazing Paula Beer (Frantz), BAD BANKS is an adrenaline-driven game of power and manipulation, of economic interests and political common sense, of personal ambitions and shifting loyalties. The six-part series was the only German TV series invited to the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival where it recently had its World Premiere as part of the Berlinale Series section. There will be a post-screening Q&A discussion with the show’s head writer Oliver Kienle and producer Lisa Blumenberg. Additional screening on Thursday, April 12th at 8pm.
Also on Saturday, April 7th at 6pm, the documentary film BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN (98 minutes) will have its New York premiere followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Marieke Schroeder and the film’s charismatic subject Charles Schumann, a legendary cocktail connoisseur of the highest order. The film takes us on an intoxicating global tour of the world’s most beautiful bars (including several bars in NYC) with Schumann, arguably Germany’s greatest living bartender, who wrote what many regard as the defining book for bartenders, The American Bar. The film explores the history of the bars, as well as the people who frequent them, which are brought to life anew each day. Additional screening on Tuesday, April 10th at 6pm.
On Sunday, April 8th at 1:30pm, the controversial and timely documentary WHEN PAUL CAME OVER THE SEA (97 minutes) will have its North American premiere followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Jakob Preuss. The film follows one migrant’s passionate and inexhaustible flight to freedom as he makes the treacherous journey from Cameroon to Berlin, and tells the story of the unusual friendship that develops between the filmmaker and his subject amidst the backdrop of the politically charged European debates around migration. Later the same day at 5pm, longtime festival partner Deutsches Haus at NYU will also host a conversation called “WHEN PAUL CAME OVER THE SEA—Borders and (In)Humanity” moderated by Noah Isenberg, and featuring the film’s director Jakob Preuss along with panelists Gabriella Etmektsoglou, Çiğdem Ipek and Christian Martin. For more info go to: http://as.nyu.edu/
Also on Sunday, April 8th at 6pm, THE FINAL JOURNEY (105 minutes) will have its New York premiere followed by a Q&A discussion with the film’s director & screenwriter Nick Baker-Monteys. The film is about a 92-year-old man (Jürgen Prochnow, DAS BOOT) who goes on a final journey with his reluctant granddaughter to his war-torn Ukrainian homeland to find the only woman he ever truly loved – just as a new war breaks out in the former Soviet Union in the spring of 2014. Additional screening on Tuesday, April 10th at 8pm.
The rest of the KINO! 2018 film program includes:
Nicolas Wackerbath’s CASTING (
Set in the 1970s, Sonja Maria Kröner’s feature debut THE GARDEN (Toronto Film Festival 2017, NY premiere, 97 minutes) is a portrait of three generations of a family who spend their summers in a communal garden. The simmering rivalries and thorny disagreements that erupt after the death of their matriarch Sophie dramatically change the extended family’s dynamics and begin to puncture the calm of the long summer day. The film will screen on Saturday, April 7th at 3:30pm, and on Wednesday, April 11th at 6pm.
In a 15th-century village, two generations of women are ostracized as sacrilegious witches in Lukas Feigelfeld’s HAGAZUSSA – A HEATHEN’S CURSE (Manhattan premiere, 102 minutes), a dark tale of a woman’s struggle with her own sanity. This horror fable culminates in the vengeful frenzy of a hallucination-driven madwoman. In a time when pagan beliefs of witches spread fear into the minds of the rural folk, the film aims to explore the thin line between ancient beliefs, magic and delusional psychosis. The film will screen on Sunday, April 8th at 8:30pm, and on Thursday, April 12th at 6pm.
After her father’s sudden death, 13-year-old Johanna, a victim of childhood polio, uses her camera to sort out fact from fiction, and memory from truth in Sandra Wollner’s THE IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE (North American premiere, 71 minutes) set in 1950s Vienna. As she
documents her childhood and family life on 8mm film, a dark family secret is revealed. Johanna soon learns memories are unreliable and things are not always what they seem. The film will screen on Monday, April 9th and Wednesday, April 11th at 4pm.
Also the NEXT GENERATION SHORT TIGER screenings (featuring 11 student shorts) will be held on Tuesday, April 10th and Thursday, April 12th at 4pm and will be free admission.
The KINO!2018 program was curated by top film industry professionals: Marian Masone (film programmer / curator / festival consultant), Karl Rozemeyer (freelance syndicated columnist / journalist) and Meghan Wurtz (sales agent / film distributor), who have expertly selected a wide cross-section of high-quality and diverse German films.
The festival will host a number of filmmakers and industry guests from Germany who will attend the festival and participate in Q&A discussions after select screenings, including Matti Geschonneck (Director, IN TIMES OF FADING LIGHT), Charles Schumann (subject of the documentary BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN), Marieke Schroeder (Producer/Director,
On Sunday, April 8th at 12pm, the festival will present a special “German Women in Film” Roundtable Talk with filmmaker Marieke Schroeder (BAR TALKS BY SCHUMANN) and producer Lisa Blumenberg (BAD BANKS).
For the third year in a row, subscription film viewing service FANDOR returns as the festival’s exclusive partner for the KINO!2018 Audience Award, and will give away free one-year subscriptions to the top five participating voters. All other participants can sign up for a subscription and will receive a 30% discount. Fandor will create a curated VoD line-up of recent German films entitled "Festival Favorites".
German Films Service + Marketing GmbH’s Managing Director Mariette Rissenbeek said: “The international reception of German films at the Berlinale 2018 shows German filmmaking offers exciting newcomer projects as well as vibrant new works of well-established filmmakers which touch audiences as well as critics. We are pleased to bring part of these films to KINO!2018 in New York.”
ABOUT GERMAN FILMS SERVICE: German Films Service + Marketing GmbH is the national information and advisory center for the promotion of German films worldwide. Established in 1954 with foreign representatives in key territories around the world, German Films is a founding member of the European Film Promotion (EFP). Some of its vast promotional activities include: the organization of the selection procedure for the German entry for the OSCAR® for Best Foreign Language Film, providing selective financial distribution support for the foreign releases of German films, organizing the annual German Films Previews event geared towards international distributors and buyers of German cinema, and organizing Festivals of German Films worldwide, including the upcoming KINO! Festival of German Films in NYC.
KINO!2018 is produced by German Films, Service + Marketing, in partnership with
Bertelsman, Deutsches Haus at New York University and Fandor;
media partner The Village Voice
and with the support of the German Consulate General New York.
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