Alexander Beyer Movies
- 2002
Director Michael Hofmann follows his 1998 feature-film debut The Beach at Trouville with an intense character study of one young woman's descent into self-destruction in Sophiiiie! Sophie (Katharina Schuttler) is in the arms of her boyfriend Manu (Alexander Beyer) for an unidentified crisis in her life. As the consoling takes a turn toward intimacy, Sophie tears herself away from Manu, takes his motorcycle, and races maniacally toward downtown Hamburg. Henceforth, Sophie spends an evening narrowly escaping various dangerous situations, ranging from sexually provoking a group of macho barflies that nearly ends in her rape to whoring herself to a man she randomly meets on the street. After one particularly long ride in a cab, she reveals her current situation to the cab's driver, Aziz (Ercan Durmaz): She is 11 weeks pregnant from a rapist and hasn't yet decided what to do with the baby. After meeting with Manu one last time, she has one last pivotal sexual encounter with a stranger that sends her into her deepest emotional spiral of the night. Sophiiiie! premiered as a competing film at the Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katharina Schuttler, Alexander Beyer, (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
A computer hacker moves from virtual vandalism to the real thing in this independent drama. Peter (Stephan Kampwirth) is a computer expert who has become obsessed with hacking into other people's systems -- so much so that one day, while picking through someone's files, his girlfriend drowns in the bathtub following a drug overdose, without Peter ever noticing until it's too late. Thrown into a panic, he flees his Berlin apartment shortly after calling the police, and goes on the lam in Cologne. Not wanting to call attention to himself by checking into a hotel, Peter breaks into empty apartments to find a place to sleep; before long, Peter is just as hooked on breaking and entering as he was on cracking secure codes. The first feature film from writer and director Marc Ottiker, 1/2 Miete was produced by Wim Wenders as part of the "Radical Digital" series from his production company, Road Movies. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stephan Kampwirth, Doris Schretzmayer, (more)
- 2003
A man who loses a very personal part of his body to cancer decides he wants it back in this offbeat black comedy. Martin Schwarz (Wotan Wilke Moehring) is a young man who has returned to Berlin after receiving a graduate degree in the United States. Short on both work and funds, Martin is alarmed by a constant pain in his groin, but doesn't want to spend the money to go to a doctor; a friend persuades a local paramedic to look at Martin, who insists he visit a hospital as soon as possible. The bad news for Martin is he's suffering from testicular cancer, which means one of his testes will have to be removed. While in the hospital, Martin meets Susanne (Julia Hummer), a beautiful patient who is carefully swiping drugs from the clinic for her own purposes. After surgery, Martin is told that he should have his other testicle removed to prevent a possible spread of the cancer. Put off by this notion, Martin instead opts for chemotherapy, and ends up in a ward with two eccentric cancer patients, Harry (Antoine Monot Jr.) and Nickel (Janek Rieke). One especially odd conversation between the three ends with Martin taking a bet that he can successfully recover his cancerous testicle from the hospital's pathology lab, a task he soon learns is far harder than he expected. Meanwhile, Martin and Susanne fall into a relationship, but she becomes increasingly upset by his inability to accept the notion that both of them may be living on borrowed time. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wotan Wilke Möhring, Julia Hummer, (more)
