AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS
Where: Palace Cinema Como, South Yarra,
and Kino Cinemas, CBD
When: April 19-30
Visit: goethe.de/ozfilmfest
ARPAD Sölter has taken the reins of this year’s 11th Audi Festival of German Films, and already feels at home in Australia. He previously worked for the German Academic Exchange in London before taking up the directorship of the Goethe Institute in Toronto. “So I’m quite used to the Queen being on the dollar,” he says with a laugh.
Taking a team spirit approach, Sölter actively encouraged his staff to get involved in the selection of all 37 films showing this year, from the terrifying Sennentuntschi from German-speaking Switzerland to the festival’s light-hearted romantic opener, Summer Window.
“I truly believe in dialogue,” he says. “It’s so much fun to go through a pile of films and defend your views. It’s not down to some apparatchik sitting in a ministry in Berlin. It’s an interesting method and I think it works best.”
This democratic approach has created a diverse program split into broad categories, including historical movies focusing on World War II and the subsequent Cold War.
Sölter is particularly impressed by Wunderkinder, which deals with the Nazi persecution of Jewish children. “You think you know everything about the Holocaust, but no,” Sölter says. “I ask everyone the simple question, ‘how many kids did the Nazis kill?’, and they don’t know. We’ve seen the pictures of little children’s shoes, but no one is aware of the scale of the atrocity.”
A lighter-hearted selection sets out to disprove the myth that Germans have no sense of humour. “Anglo-Saxons may find German comedy a contradiction in terms, but I believe labels are for suitcases only,” he says.
One of his top picks, Hell, is the debut feature from writer/director Tim Fehlbaum, produced by Hollywood big-hitter Roland Emmerich (Independence Day).
“No one would expect Germans to come up with a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film in the Mad Max tradition,” he says, laughing. “They shot it in Brandenburg, but it looks like Australia, because it’s so flat and it’s set in a world where there’s no water and it’s so hot it kills you.”
THE BEST OF THE FEST
Colour of the Ocean: A tourist on the Cayman Islands tries to help an African and his son, but things don’t quite work out.
Hell: In a world where the sun has become our enemy, a rag-tag band tries to stay alive.
Hotel Lux: The latest film from multi award-wining actor, writer and director Leander Haußmann explores 1938 communist Moscow.
Rodicas: A doco about two Jewish Romanian best friends, both called Rodica, who have settled in Sydney.
