Hanna Schygulla Movies

Bela Tarr follows up on his seven-hour epic Satantango, considered by some critics as one of the finest films of the 1990s, with this elegant, haunting work about the cycles of violence that have dogged Eastern European history. Jancos (Lars Rudolph) is a wide-eyed innocent who works as an occasional postal worker and as a caretaker for Mr. Ezster (Peter Fitz). An outsider and a visionary, he marvels at the miracles of creation, from the planets rotating in the heavens to the sundry animals on earth. One day, a circus featuring jars full of medical anomalies and a massive dead whale entombed in a corrugated metal trailer visits Jancos' economically depressed village. Another more sinister attraction is a shadowy figure dubbed "The Prince," whose nihilist rants incite the town's disaffected to riot. Not long afterwards, Mrs. Ezster (Hanna Schygulla) cajoles her estranged husband to join a citizen's action group against the circus, threatening to move back into his house if he doesn't play along. Tension in the town builds until, after one of The Prince's hate-filled speeches, throngs of angry men with blunt instruments ransack and brutalize a men's hospital ward. When the dust clears, lives are irrevocably changed. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

After his successful documentary Ram (1989), it took director Menelaos Karamaghiolis a decade to jump to feature films with Black Out, a youth-oriented psychological thriller and a love story. An Air Force pilot is declared missing over the Aegean Sea, but his girlfriend keeps getting mysterious recordings of his voice describing their stormy love affair. The rest of the plot is very much like Othello, Diego appearing in the form of an ex-boyfriend who drops the acid of jealousy into the unsuspecting pilot's ear and convinces him to disappear to test the fidelity of his love. If one cannot trust friends, who can one trust? The film uses black and white for the present, color for frequent flashbacks. Hanna Schygulla makes an appearance in the film. The film won the Third Prize for fiction, "Best Debut-Film Director", "Best Leading Actress," and "Best Editing" awards of the State Film Awards presented following the Thessaloniki Film Festival, 1998. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

A woman uses poetry to communicate the emotions she cannot verbalize in this drama. At the age of seven, Lea has already become accustomed to verbal and physical abuse from her father, but when she witnesses the rape and murder of her mother during one of her father's particularly vicious tirades, the event traumatizes her so severely that she's struck dumb. With her dying words, Lea's mother encourages her to write, and as she's raised by foster parents only marginally more compassionate than her father, Lea writes poems in her mother's memory and has built an underground shrine where she posts her work. When Lea (Lenka Vlasakova) turns 21, her stepfather is approached by Strehlow (Christian Redl), a wealthy German who offers him a large amount of money for Lea's hand in marriage; the stepfather accepts without explaining the situation to his daughter. Strehlow proves to be as cruel as the other people in Lea's life; after forcing her to marry him, he keeps her chained inside his house and beats her when she refuses to obey his wishes. However, in time Stehlow becomes aware of Lea's poetry, and after it's translated into German from the original Slovak by a local woman (Hanna Schygulla), Strehlow becomes aware of Lea's humanity, and her words reach a reserve of compassion that lurks deep below the surface. Director Ivan Fila won awards for his work on Lea at the Venice and Brussels Film Festivals, and the film received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Foreign Language film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Utilizing computer-generated effects and creative splicing to place Germany's most famous living directors in a fantasy movie house, filmmaker Edgar Reitz takes an innovative approach toward exploring the history of German cinema. In this magical theater, directors such as Leni Riefenstahl, Detlev Buck, Volker Schloendorff, Margarethe von Trotta, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog "discuss" the state of German cinema with a focus on New German Cinema. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This homage to the cinema by venerated movie-maker Agnes Varda, often dubbed the "grandmother" of the French New Wave, features an all-star international cast. The story is based upon the memories and insights of the 100-year old Mr. Simon Cinema. He lives in a magnificent house filled with movie memorabilia. To help him remember the important details of his career he hires Camille, a film student to write down his remembrances and experiences which have involved all areas of movie-making. Camille comes once a day for 101 days. Film clips, photographs and actual visitors highlight his stories. As he continues to spin his yarns, the imagery in the film smoothly morph into other images. Camille, when not recording, is involved in other exploits including a romance with a production assistant, Mica who aspires to becoming a director. She also begins plotting a way to get to Mr. Cinema's fortune by having a friend pose as his long lost heir. Many other characters are peripherally involved including Death, an Italian seeking the rights to his film catalogue, and a memory specialist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Mavi Sürgün is a fictionalized account of one period of the life of a Turkish journalist who was condemned to exile for an article he wrote in 1925. He turned his punishment into a reward by creating a little paradise in what is today the holiday resort, Bodrum. In fact he is considered by some to be the first ecologist. The film concentrates on this latter aspect of his character and through flashbacks portrays the inner turmoil of a man who is trying to come to terms with his past. The slow pace is somewhat of a drawback, the flashbacks are often confusing and the protagonist is not always very convincing. But the photography of the country side is exceptional Kenan Ormanlar and the short appearance by a very theatrical Hanna Schygulla of Fassbinder fame adds a little spice to the drama. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

Instead of simply traveling to eastern Siberia to collect a modern art collection willed to him by a forgotten uncle, Daniel (Jerome Koenig), who runs an art gallery in Paris, decides (for reasons which are never explained) to bring a ten-foot long hand along with him. It is perhaps a portion of a huge sculpture of a golem (an artifical being dicussed in Jewish legends). Thus, instead of flying to Vladivostok, he rents a truck in St. Petersburg and drives across Russia. Along the way, he drops hints about a short-lived experiment in social engineering: Birobidjian, an autonomous region created in Siberia in 1928 especially for Jews. Hanna Schygulla, who starred in the first film of this trilogy, also makes a brief appearance in this, the second. Sam Fuller, a pet of the European filmmaking community, also makes a brief appearance. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In modern-day Paris, a cabalist known as the Maharal has created a golem, an artificial being constructed of earth and clay, infused with spirit through the recitation of a special formula. The legendary being he brings to life is known in this instance as "The Spirit of Exile," and the magician's goal in creating her was to create a protector for Jews in need of one. In this movie, the golem is motivated to assist numerous people whose lives are marked by tragedy. In the main story, she must try to help Shemesh, a woman whose many troubles cause her to resemble the Biblical character of Job. She has been evicted from her home after her husband and sons die, and she and her daughter-in-law must find some means for surviving their difficult situation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this tragic melodrama, a man who has been hiding his Nazi past has it come back to haunt him when his hippie daughter, whom he disapproves of, comes back to bond with her daughter, whom he's been raising. Meanwhile, he and his drinking buddy, a beer-truck driver, go on a jaunt to Poland to recover some gold fillings he had hidden years ago during the time when he worked in a concentration camp. The truck driver inadvertently leaves a filling lying around at home, and his mother immediately recognizes it for what it is. When she confronts him, he claims that "Jews don't mean anything to me" and she must then reveal his Jewish heritage to him: she was a housekeeper in a Jewish household and he was a child there whom she adopted during the Holocaust in order to save his life. The driver then confronts the wily old Nazi, who conceives a brutal scheme which will save his cozy life at the expense of the reputations of the driver and his granddaughter. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide