Marita Breuer Movies

Director Tom Tykwer followed up his international hit Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) with this drama, which also examines young people living on the edges of the law. Sisi (Franka Potente) is an attractive but withdrawn woman who works in a psychiatric clinic, while Bodo (Benno Fürmann) is looking to make some quick money after his recent release from the army. Bodo robs a gas station and is fleeing on foot when he accidentally causes Sisi to be hit by a truck. Realizing she's seriously injured, Bodo comes to Sisi's rescue and performs an emergency tracheotomy on her before he escapes again. Sisi, who is often pursued by men but shies away from their advances, finds that she longs to meet the mysterious Bodo again, and eventually tracks him down to a hideout he shares with his brother, Walter (Joachim Krol). Bodo and Walter angrily send Sisi away, but she unexpectedly encounters them when they pull a robbery at a bank where she's running an errand. Bodo and Walter are caught in a shoot-out with police, and Sisi helps to spirit Bodo away to the clinic where she works, trying to spare him the grim news that Walter was killed in the melee. In addition to serving as writer and director, Tom Tykwer also composed the musical score for The Princess and the Warrior in collaboration with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Unlike other feature-length versions of European TV miniseries, Heimat loses nothing in its translation to the big screen. It was 15 1/2 hours on TV, and remained 15 1/2 hours in theatres! Produced for German television over a 5-year period, Heimat details the turbulent years between 1919 and 1982 through the eyes of the citizens of a small, fictional German village. The central character is Marita Breuer, who matures from a fresh-faced teen to a wrinkled, grim-visaged survivor of the best and the worst life has to offer. The final sequences, far removed from such traumatic collective experiences as the inflation of 1923 and the war of the 1940s, tend to be more sentimental than the earlier passages, but are no less masterfully handled by director Edgar Reitz. Also worth noting is cinematographer Gernot Roll's creative use of color, often switching between hues and monochrome within a scene for dramatic impact. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi