Branko Samarovski Movies

Love and desperation brings two lonely people together in this drama adapted from the novel by Uwe Timm. World War II is grinding to a close, and middle-aged Lena Bruecker (Barbara Sukowa) is caught in the fallout of Germany's crushing defeat. Her husband is missing in action on the Eastern Front, her children are all grown and out of touch with her, and each day she has to hand out meager rations to the hungry at an Food Distribution Agency office with her co-worker Holzinger (Wolfgang Boeck). Lena spends her evenings waiting out Allied air attacks and sometimes going to the movies, and one night she happens to meet Hermann Bremer (Alexander Khuon), a German sailor. Hermann is on a short leave and is wary about returning to a dangerous assignment that seems increasingly futile. Lena and Hermann fall in love, and she offers to let him hide in her flat, but Lena's landlord Lammers (Branko Samarovski) is rabidly loyal to the Third Reich and will certainly turn Hermann in to the authorities if he discovers the deserter. Die entdeckung der currywurst (aka The Invention of Curried Sausage) received its North American premiere at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Set within a Viennese apartment block, this affectionate Austrian comedy makes fun of the strange habits of the famed city's residents. The building is located in a middle-class area and has residents from many age groups and walks of life. Many of the tenants are much older, but there are also a few children about. In one apartment lives a large group of Polish construction workers, while a Yugoslavian woman and her huge family attempt to survive in their tiny flat. The episodic story of the lives of these and other tenants is framed by a visit from a civil servant from the Office of Statistics. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In another 1983 cinematic projection into the future like Pankow 95, director Richard Blank portrays a cold and oppressive German world where a woman is picked up and put into an asylum. The practice in the asylum is to electrocute prisoners in a large restaurant-type setting -- and since the woman has no desire to be publicly zapped into oblivion, she takes up with a guard who has fallen in love with her and the two escape. While away, they travel to various places, and the woman continues to look for her brother -- whom she finds but then sees him apparently commit suicide. All of this, and the rest of the film, move forward by inches at a time, creating a dull effect that dims the story, a story that leaves more than one question mark as to its meaning or purpose. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide