Katrin Sass Movies
- 1982
Nina (Katrin Sass), a young divorced mother, is in court to fight to keep her children, and she is partly successful as the judge decides to grant her one year of probationary custody to see if she can really handle the job adequately. She works scrubbing subway cars down -- not the most lucrative job -- and part of her earlier problems in taking care of her three children involved a lack of money. Now she leaves the two oldest children in a state boarding school and focuses on taking care of the youngest one at home. She gets a new boyfriend who is able to come see her on the weekends, and that brightens up her life for awhile until she foolishly ends their relationship by taking up with another man, not nearly as worthwhile. Her mistake is painfully apparent when the second boyfriend leaves her for someone else. Depressed, yet ready to continue her fight to successfully pass probation, Nina listens to her social worker about how to manage finances a little better. Her battle is far from over, but with the help of this social worker who has been there through thick and thin, Nina might stand a good chance yet of keeping her children. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katrin Sass, Monika Lennartz, (more)
- 1985
The saga of Stefan (David C. Bunners), an 18-year-old construction worker who struggles to make it on his own is the theme that winds its way through this honest and sometimes amusing look at growing up. There are surprises in store for the young lad once he manages to move into his own apartment (he had a hard time telling his mother he was moving out). His landlord exploits his good nature to get him to do work around the house and to do favors for his friends too. Stefan's relationship with his mother is already strained after he moved out, and when she discovers how he is being used she really loses it. In an attempt to apologize, she gives Stefan her apartment to watch while she is away for awhile. He opportunistically decides to bring his new girlfriend home overnight, with comic and unforeseen consequences to his relationship with her and his mother. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David C. Bunners, Jutta Wachowiak, (more)
- 1986
The German Das Haus Am Fluss (House on the River) is based on "The Russian Pelt," a 1942 story by Frederick Wolf. The film takes place in an industrial community just outside of Berlin in 1941. Two sisters--unmarried Emmi and married Agnes--live with their mother while their men are off to war. Emmi receives a Ukranian blouse from her fiance, who is fighting in Russia. Her acceptance of what is considered "war goods" upsets the equillibrium of the community. Meanwhile, Agnes is being pursued by the factory boss who arranged with his Gestapo contacts to have Agnes' husband sent to the Russian front. Noting the effect the Ukranian blouse has on the flighty Emmi, the factory boss hopes to entice Agnes by offering her a Ukranian fur pelt. Agnes' seriously injured husband returns from the war with a similar pelt as a gift. Agnes symbolically accepts her husband's gift over that of the boss, who responds by threatening to have the husband imprisoned as a subversive. The boss is killed by Agnes who, despite her subsequent arrest by the Gestapo, feels that she's won a moral victory. As for Emmi, she hangs herself upon discovering that her fiance has been killed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katrin Sass, Manfred Gorr, (more)
- 1989
Hans Fallada (1893-1947) was a German novelist who wrote several best seller in the period between the two World Wars. His highly regarded books focused on the lives of ordinary people and were considered masterpieces of socialist realism. As the Nazi National Socialist party consolidated its hold over Germany, he was under ever-increasing pressure to write a "quality" anti-Semitic novel. This biographical film is set in 1937, with Fallada (Jorg Gudzuhn) suffering the effects of living under a microscope. The film details his decline, as he is intermittently imprisoned and threatened in order to motivate him to write for the Fatherland. Even the attention of his kind, patient wife (Jutta Wachowiak) and loving children begin to feel oppressive to him. This is one of the few films to take a serious, in-depth look at the tribulations of a creative artist pulled in all different directions by the real world. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jutta Wachowiak, Katrin Sass, (more)
- 1991
Despite a host of characteristics that might lead one to assume that medicine in Germany is practiced on a more enlightened basis than it is in, say, the United States, it is still customary there to keep a patient's impending death secret from him or her. In this story, two actresses are friends and one of them has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The well one feels that her friend should know that her life is ending and does something about it. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katrin Sass, Gudrun Ritter, (more)
- 1998
Janek Rieke wrote, directed, and stars in this German romantic comedy about loser Jonas ($Rieke), a 26-year-old with allergies who still lives with his parents, wealthy from their oil-tanker business. Jonas falls for eco-oriented bicycle courier Lena (Lisa Martinek), who tells him she will only sleep with him after seeing proof that he's not a wimp -- but then tensions erupt when an oil tanker disaster leads to her discovery of his father's profession. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janek Rieke, Lisa Martinek, (more)
- 2000
This slice-of-life film from veteran German television director Andreas Dresen concerns the trials and tribulations of Anne (Gabriela Maria Schmeide), a young Berliner whose aspirations to be a police officer land her in Rostock, a run-down city in the northeastern part of the country. Despite her enthusiasm for the job, Anne is eventually discouraged by her rote, petty-crime assignments, not to mention her not-so-endearingly gruff partner, Mike (Axel Prahl). Things look up, however, when she meets the handsome Benny (Paul Grubba); unfortunately, his father is one of the small-time crooks Anne has to contend with on the job. Policewoman premiered at the 2000 Munich Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martina Gedeck, Axel Prahl, (more)
A dedicated young German boy pulls off an elaborate scheme to keep his mother in good health in this comedy drama from director Wolfgang Becker. Suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma after seeing her son arrested during a protest, Alex's (Daniel Brühl) socialist mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), remains comatose through the fall of the Berlin wall and the German Democratic Republic. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother's awakening, Alex strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible. Keeping their apartment firmly rooted in the past, Alex's scheme works for a while, but it's not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, (more)
- 2003
On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Kiev in 1941, two families -- one Jewish and the other Ukrainian -- ponder what the future may hold for them in director Jeff Kanew's 2003 war drama Babij Jar. Genady Lerner (Michael Degen), a Jew and the patriarch of a relatively large extended family, watches with profoundly mixed emotions as the Russian army retreats from the Ukrainian city under intense bombardment from the advancing Nazi army. Skeptical of the rumors abounding regarding the Nazis' extermination of the Jewish race, Genady opts to remain at the family home. Meanwhile, Genady's longtime neighbor Lena Onofrienko (Katrin Sass) decides that assisting the invading army may be in her best interests, in spite of her friendship with the Lerners. Soon, both families are caught up in what became one of the largest Nazi atrocities of World War II, in which 35,000 Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered and incinerated over a period of two days in the nearby ravine called Babij Jar. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Degen, Barbara de Rossi, (more)
- 2006
Libina Mitevska stars as a mother in search of the daughter that was taken from her when the family was forced into an internment camp during the Bosnian conflict in director Christian Wagner's award-winning family drama. Thirty year-old Senada (Mitevska) is a successful real estate broker and accomplished volleyball player living in the Bosnia and Herzegovina village of Brcko. Though in the surface it would appear as if Senada has everything a woman could want in life, her family has been ripped apart by war and she is haunted by the memories of the daughter that was forcefully taken from her in one of Bosnia's darkest hours. Not only did her marriage to the kindly Samir (Senad Basic) crumble during the conflict that consumed the land, but her daughter Aida was taken from the pair by aid workers and spirited away to an undisclosed location. Convinced that she has located her daughter in the Ulm, Germany, Senada enlists the aid of a sympathetic trafficker named Dzigera (Zdenko Jelcic) in crossing the border and avoiding the radar of local aid worker Mrs. Jandrasko (Katrin Sass). Upon discovering that her daughter has been renamed and is currently being raised by a well-to-do German couple, the desperate mother watches from afar while planning to recover the unsuspecting adolescent who seems to have all but forgotten her turbulent past. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Labina Mitevska, Senad Basic, (more)
- 2008
- NR
A pair of twins hitchhiking to their mother's funeral in Spain find their innocent journey taking an unexpectedly ominous turn as feelings of loathing, rivalry, and intimacy boil to the surface in director Pascal-Alex Vincent's melancholy drama. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alexandre Carril, Victor Carril, (more)
