So German!

GOETHE FILMS: PEAK German Docs
Series co-presented by Hot Docs & POV

North America’s biggest documentary film festival Hot Docs brings hundreds of films to Canadian audiences each spring. The Goethe-Institut is adding a coda with selected German documentaries that have won the Goethe Documentary Prize @ DOK Leipzig Festival in recent years. A conversation about cultural specificity in documentary filmmaking and international vs. national festival programming.

LAND IN SIGHT (Germany, 2012, 97 min), directed by Judith Keil and Antje Kruska, with Brian Ngopan, Farid Sabimi, Abdul Nasser Jarada, and others

North American Premiere

Co-presented by Diaspora Film Festival

Abdul, Brian und Farid are stranded in a secluded home for asylum seekers in the small town of Bad Belzig in Germany. From there, they are looking for a way into German society. Their ideas clash with the local mentality at village festivals, in government offices and night clubs. Instead of evoking consternation, LAND IN SIGHT focuses on the involuntary humour of those Encounters.

“Without a moralizing undertone but with lots of empathy for the protagonists, LAND IN SIGHT makes a case for something that should be taken for granted: to see the individual behind the anonymous numbers of the refugee statistics.” – Kino Zeit

Antje Kruska was born in 1973 in Dortmund. She studied Journalism, Spanish, Sociology, Nordic Languages, and Theater Science, and interned at ZDF TV.

Judith Keil was born in 1973 in Straubing and studied German Philology, Journalism, and Theater, Film and Television Studies. She has worked as an assistant director for theatre and film productions.

Together, they have directed the award-winning documentaries EXIT EAST (1999), DER GLANZ VON BERLIN (2001), TEUFLISCHE SPIELE (2002), DANCING WITH MYSELF (2005), the feature WHEN WE OWN THE WORLD (2009), and LAND IN SIGHT (2013).

Details
Language: with English subtitles
Price: $10, day-of sales only at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, open at 10am, in person or by phone +1 888 5998433

All GOETHE FILMS are open to audience 18+

Part of the Goethe-Institut’s focus on German Film

In association with Germany @ Canada 2017
Partners from Immigration to Innovation