Self-criticism of a Bourgeois Dog

THEATRICAL RELEASE

AUSTRIA 27.04.2017 Filmgarten

GERMANY 08.06.2017 Grandfilm

RUSSIA 17.06.2017 Cineticle Films

FESTIVALS

Rotterdam IFF, Netherlands (Bright Future Competition)

Berlinale, Germany (Perspektive Deutsches Kino)

FICUNAM, Mexico

Febiofest Prague, Czech Republic (New Europe)

Lichter Filmfest Frankfurt, Germany (Zukunft Deutscher Film)

GegenKino Leipzig, Germany

Fajr IFF Tehran, Iran

Crossing Europe Linz, Austria (Competition)

EMAF Osnabrück, Germany

FICIC Cosquín, Argentinien (Retrospective Julian Radlmaier)

Bildrausch Basel, Switzerland (Competition)

New Horizons Wroclaw, Poland (Films on Art)

Melbourne Internationales Filmfestival, Australia (International Europe)

FEATURE FILM

Director:  Julian Radlmaier
Producer:  Kirill Krasovski
DoP: Markus Koob
Production Company: faktura film in co-production with German Film and Television Academy DFFB and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg RBB

LOGLINE

A bourgeois dog and former filmmaker confesses how he became four-legged by failing in love, apple- picking and revolution. A political comedy with magic twists. 
 

SYNOPSIS

A bourgeois dog confesses how he was transformed from being a filmmaker to being four-legged: Unable to find financing for his film, JULIAN is forced to accept a job as a seasonal farmhand. At a party, however, he makes the young Canadian expat CAMILLE believe that he's going to do research for a communist fairy-tale film and offers her the leading part. To his great surprise, she decides to accompany him, sparking off Julian's lurking romantic fantasies.
Thus they arrive at the deceitfully idyllic scene of an exploitative apple plantation. While Julian finds the manual labour agonizing and fears the strange roommates in his humble container home, Camille enthusiastically plunges into the alleged research and makes friends with HONG and SANCHO, two credulous proletarians in pursuit of happiness. For Julian, it's getting more and more difficult to act the communist filmmaker. And what's more, a hot-tempered model worker with American dreams gets in his way, a mute monk with magical powers and a screw loose shows up, the owner of the plantation accidentally gets killed, and an attempted revolution ends up in confusion. At this moment, however, the sparrows in the trees come up with an unexpected plan... 

Supported by: Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB), nordmedia – Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH, German Films

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Selfcriticismofabourgeoisdog/

Technical Aspects:

Germany 2017, fiction feature, 99min, color, Shooting format: Arri Amira 2K, Screening copy: DCP, 24fps, Aspect ratio: 1,37:1, Sound format: 5.1, Original language: German, English, Subtitles : German, English 

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DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

PRESSKIT ENGLISH

PRESSEMAPPE DEUTSCH

Director's Statement
Markus Nechleba and Julian Radlmaier talking about Self-criticism of a bourgeois dog

*IN PRODUCTION*

DOCUMENTARY

Director: Oleksandr Techynskyi

Producers: Gennady Kofman, Kirill Krasovski, Yulia Serdyukova

Production Companies: MaGiKa Film Company, faktura film, Honest Fish Documentary Stories

SYNOPSIS

In winter at the crossroads of savage East and civilized West, people of the Ukrainian part of the Danube delta earn their living by cutting reeds while dreaming to catch the legendary beluga fish that could bring the lucky one a fortune on the spot. With dreams rather than goals and water rather than firm ground beneath their feet, these people revel in the very moment of this unbearably lightness of being.

by Alexandra Balteanu | Germany 2016 | 75'

FEATURE FILM

Romanian with English subtitles

FESTIVALS

2016 San Sebastian FF, Spain (New Directors New Films Competition)

2016 Zurich FF, Switzerland (Focus Switzerland, Germany and Austria Competition)

2017 Saarbrücken FF, Germany (Competition Max Ophüls Prize)

2017 Pune IFF, India

2017 Göteborg FF, Sweden (New Directors Competition)

2017 Guadalajara IFF, Mexico (Europa Nuevas Tendencias)

2017 Achtung Berlin, Germany (New Berlin Film Award Competition)

2017 Crossing Europe FF, Austria (Competition)

AWARDS

2017 Saarbrücken FF: Best Director Prize and the Prize of Ecumenical Jury

2017 Achtung Berlin: German Film Critics Association Award in the category ´Best Film´ and Special mention for the Best Director

SYNOPSIS

Lidia grows pigeons and lives a mundane existence with a husband and two children. Denisa has a boyfriend that needs new sneakers. Vanesa dreams of finding a boyfriend with green eyes. Three different women share a workplace and voice their daily concerns to each other in conversations.

You might think they are secretaries, who enjoy chatting about the banalities of life and have their daily coffee break together. Just a normal life, only that they are prostitutes in order to survive. The daily routine ends in a humiliating confrontation with the police and some ice-cream.

CREW

director ALEXANDRA BALTEANU

producer STANISLAV DANYLYSHYN

cinematography MATAN RADIN

production DFFB

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PRESSKIT ENGLISH

Director RUDOLF DOMKE | GERMANY | 2015 | 124'

DOCUMENTARY

German, Spanish, Russian, Guarani with English subtitles 

FESTIVALS

Filmfest München 2015, New German Cinema (WP)

Duisburger Filmwoche 2015

De Corpore Mortis describes the harsh life of a small German community of people in the remote area of Paraguay, after all dream are shattered. It is about the will to survive and to find a new home.

Synopsis

An ethnic German colony in Paraguay is in ruins. Although this colony exists less than 10 years, the dream of a social utopia that existed in this place, belongs to the past. Nikolai Neufeld, founder of the colony, is imprisoned for economic fraud, he has 60 million euros of debt and 1,700 creditors. About 15 years ago he bought lots of land in the remote area of Paraguay and started aggressively to promote to settle there. His audience was a minority in Germany, which is known as Russian-Germans, most of whom have German roots and have moved since the late 80's from the former Soviet Union to Germany and lived there already 10 to 20 years. His great promise was a municipal, carefree life in the rural idyll away from all disappointments and constraints of modern civilization. Most of the houses in the colony are abandoned by now. Many families have returned to Germany or try their luck elsewhere, in other places in Paraguay, Argentina or Canada, -if they have relatives there. The film is about the people who stayed there and try to survive, as self- sufficient farmers, as ranchers and missionaries. The school they must pay themselves or teach their own children. Those willing to integrate send their children to the Paraguayan schools in the surrounding villages. All entrepreneurial efforts have proved to be experiments that went bankrupt. 

The bold vision Neufelds to become the largest macadamia producer in the world, has remained an illusion. The film is a meditation on their hard life after the breakup of all dreams. It is also about subliminal aggression within a community that lives isolated, is divided and feels threatened in its existence, if not willing to adapt. Many of them are now armed and the will to peacefully communicate fades more and more. 

Directors Statement 

The cow that is slaughtered, keeps alive those who consume it. A seed dies and becomes something new. An ethnic German colony in South America disintegrates and provides opportunities for new forms of existence. This film is an examination of the textures of such deaths and of what it contains within itself.

Biography Director

Rudolf Domke, was born 1978 in Kustanaj, former USSR (Kazakhstan). Since the age of eleven he lived in Germany. After finishing school he traveled by foot several years. Then learned the craft of a stone sculptor. Since 2008, he is a film directing student at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, DFFB.

Filmography Director

2008  Herr Schäfer / Video / 16 Min

2009  Ein halber Tag im Leben eines Eichbeamten / 16mm / 5 Min 

2010  Der Vagabund / Super 16 / 14 Min 

2012  Schuld und Sühne / Super 16 / 20 Min 

2013  Carla / DCP / 12 Min

Technical Details

Country of production: Germany 

Year of production: 2015       

Genre: Documentary                                  

Running time: 124 min                

Screening format: DCP  

German, Spanish, Russian, Guarani with English subtitles 

Festivals & Sales

Laure Tinette | German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) l.tinette@dffb.de www.dffb.de    

A PROLETARIAN WINTER'S TALE by Julian Radlmaier | Germany 2014 | 63'

Logline: An absurdist fairy tale about three young Georgians who have to clean a German castle for an exhibition and get revolutionary ideas.

AWARDS

* Artistic Contribution Award, Olhar de Cinema - Curitiba IFF

* Audience Award, FICUNAM Mexico City

FESTIVALS

IFF Rotterdam 

Viennale - Vienna IFF

European Film Festival Sevilla

FICUNAM Mexico City

Olhar de Cinema - Curitiba IFF 

2morrow FF Moscow

IFF Ljubljana

IFF "Spirit of Fire" Khanty-Mansiysk

Bildrausch FF Basel

Fresh Film Fest Prague

Zagreb Human Rights FF

Festifreak Festival Int. de Cine Independiente La Plata

Arkipel Int. Documentary and Experimental FF Jakarta

FICIC Cosquín

Festival of German Cinema, Bucharest

Festival of German Cinema, Novosibirsk

Underdox Int. Documentary and Experimental FF Munich

Berlin Art Film Festival

Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival

GegenKino Leipzig

Mikrokosmos Cinema Athens

PRESS QUOTES

Hope for cinema!
Gerwin Tamsma, IFF Rotterdam

A playful, unclassifiable, and barefaced film. Magnificent use of the depth of field.
"2nd best first feature 2014"
Roger Koza, Otro Cines, Argentina

Bold, symbolic, political cinema. With a brechtian attitude and marxist vocabulary. Ironic and colourful, but also unwieldy and theatrical. Totally different from the German cinema of the last Decade.
Brigitte Haring, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen

A true fairy tale the author of which succeeds to ask some actual and some eternal questions about the world, class struggle, neoconservatism, the return of reactionary rhetorics and the discreditation of leftist ideas. Surprisingly mature but with a youthful freshness. Between Straub, Athina Rachel Tsangari and Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Vladimir Lyashchenko, Gazeta.ru

In a very interesting way, the film constructs an idiosyncratic cinematic space – somewhere between the asceticism of Straub and the playfulness of Iosseliani. A modern leftist cinema.
Evgeniy Maisel, Iskusstvo Kino (Kino Art)

A PROLETARIAN WINTER'S TALE has a lot to do with Brecht and his conception of the folk play. In this regard, one must think of the anarchistic humour of Liesl Karlstadt and Karl Valentin on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of that vivid abstract dream called MACHORKA-MUFF, which stands at the beginning of the oeuvre of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. The result is funny, proudly dialectic, simple but full of unexpected excentricities. And amdist all that: a trio looking so defiantly melancholic as if it came out of an early Kaurismäki.
Olaf Moller, Bildrausch FF Basel

A film that proves that Radlmaier is one of the few exciting young German filmmakers working today. It also provides another hope that the marginalization of serious and formally relevant German cinema in a national and international context might stop. His political comedy about three Georgian workers testing their revolutionary cabability during an art exhibition at a castle, is full of wit and intelligent use of stylistic devices. 
Patrick Holzapfel, twitchfilm. com, Canada

Very elegantly, Radlmaier created a modern fairy tale and proves that German cinema can be thriving beyond Mumblecore and the Berlin School.
Dunja Bialas, Artechok, Germany 

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING EUROPE by Julian Radlmaier | Germany 2013 | 46'

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

German Film Critics Award for The Best Experimental Film 2014

* International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2013

* Viennna International Film Festival, 2013

* Filmfestival goEast, 2014

* 9. UNDERDOX Filmfestival für Dokument und Experiment, Munich, Germany 2014

SYNOPSIS

Berlin, a summer in the age of neoliberalism: the spectre of the soviet avant-garde is haunting the city. A young Georgian contract-worker is surprised to find the ghost of the Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in his kitchen. At the same time, his friend Kasimir inherits a big fortune, but what shall he do with all this money? Framed by a travel through time leading to Flaubert’s 19th Century und the shooting of a revisionist melodrama for German television, the film follows the adventures of these three characters in contemporary Berlin. A suprematist digital comedy about the transmission of emancipatory energies.

Technical Details

Germany 2012

Short Fiction, 46 min, colour

Shooting format: Red MX,

Screening format: DCP (2K), 25 fps (original) / 24 fps (DCP),

Aspect ratio: 1:1,78 letterboxed to 1:1,33

DIRECTOR DARIA BELOVA | GERMANY | 2011 | 09'

SYNOPSIS

Another day at the ballet school. Classes routine goes as usual, when Sophie notices a boy outdoors, on the street. He was here yesterday already. She finds him mysterious, maybe she likes him, but doesn’t dare to do anything with it. Surrounded by her frivolously chattering classmates, she realizes that another girl is faster making decisions, and Sophie finds herself caught in a vortex of grief and aggression.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

For me the age of 12 is something very tender and touching. It is the age of mysteries and illusions. An age that is lived surrounded by mirrors. At that age, a very minor event can raise a storm in the soul of a young girl. The world of ballet, which is beautiful and cruel at the same time, and maturation and self-perception inside this closed space of a ballet school – this is my central theme here. Tenderness, that turns into cruelty, and the way it happens.

FESTIVALS

* 17th FESTIVAL BRASILEIRO DE CINEMA UNIVERSITARIO/ BRAZILIAN STUDENT FILM FESTIVAL 

*** PRIZE OF TECHNICAL CONTRIBUTION AT FBCU ***
* 42nd ALCINE – THE ALCALÀ DE HENARES / COMUNIDAD DE MADRID FILM FESTIVAL (Madrid, Spain) 

*** SECOND AWARD FROM THE EUROPEAN SHORT FILM COMPETITION ALCINE***

* 57th CORONA CORK FILM FESTIVAL (Cork, Ireland) 

***SPECIAL MENTION***
8th DIECIMINUTI FILM FESTIVAL (Ceccano, Italy) 

***AWARD OF BEST PHOTOGRAPHY*** 

* PLUS CAMERIMAGE – INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHY * 23rd TRIESTE FILM FESTIVAL (Italy, Int'l Competition)
* 56th BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (London, UK)
* 24th INT'L SHORT FILM FESTIVAL DRESDEN (Germany, Children's Special Program) 

* 16th SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL (B&H, Children's Program)
* 32nd FANTASPORTO – OPORTO INT'L FILM FESTIVAL (Portugal, Fantas in Shorts)
* 21st MUESTRA DE CINE INTERNACIONAL DE PALENCIA (Spain, Int'l Competition)
* 6th INT'L SHORT FILM FESTIVAL OF INDIA (India, Int'l Competition)
* KKO FESTIVAL - 11th SHORT FILMS FESTIVAL OF ALTKIRCH (France, Int'l Competition)
* 13th FESTIWAL KINA AMATORSKIEGO I NIEZALEZNEGO KAN – 2012 (Poland, School Films Comp.)
* 7th BERKSHIRE INT'L FILM FESTIVAL (USA, Int'l Competition)
* SCREENING OF GERMAN FILM AND TELVISION ACADEMY BERLIN @ CINEMA BABYLON (Germany) * 9th FEMINA – INT'L WOMEN'S FILM FESTIVAL (Brazil, Int'l Competition)
* 42nd GIFFONI FILM FESTIVAL (Italy, Int'l Competition)
* 5th WIZ-ART (Ukraine, Int'l Competition)
* GIMLI FILM FESTIVAL 2012 (Canada, Int'l Competition)
* 9th SALENTO INT'L FILM FESTIVAL (Italy, Int'l Competition)
* 11th REGGIO FILM FESTIVAL (Italy)
* 12th INDEPENDENT SHORT FILM FESTIVAL at Goethe-Institut Kairo (Kairo, Egypt)
* KURZFILMNACHT GREIFSWALD 2012 (Greifswald, Germany)
* FILOFEST INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL 2012 (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
* 25th MINIMALEN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL (Trondheim, Norway)
* NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL 2013 (USA)
* STOCKHOLM FILM FESTIVAL JUNIOR (Stockholm, Sweden)
* INDEPENDENT DAYS 13 | FILMFEST (Karlsruhe, Germany) 

Director and Screenwriter:  Michal Ostatkiewicz
Producer:  Kirill Krasovski
Production Company:  German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb)

Synopsis
A silent Bermuda Triangle in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a café.
It's evening and Susan, a young woman, is sitting alone in a cafe. A couple with a dog enters and sits at the next table. Their dog seems to know Susan well, the man also. Susan doesn’t know the woman. And the man would like it should stay this way. But the dog helps Susan to find out what’s going on here.

Directors Statement
What interests me in this story, is the 'banality' of an infidelity and her resulting consequences. The tension that arises when the cheater and the cheated person meet each other by the blind chance and have to pretend: when the words are secondary and the suppressed feelings are dominant and overpowering.

Crew:
Director: Michal Ostatkiewicz
Script: Mirjam Charlotte Blümlein 
DoP: Merle Sarah Jothe      
Editor: Merle Sarah Jothe, Michal Ostatkiewicz   
Sound: Steffen Herzberg  
Music: Kai Ullmann
Producer: Kirill Krasovski

Cast:

Susan: Julia Thurnau
Wife: Melissa Holroyd
Husband: Christian Alexander Rogler

Biography Director

Born: 05.10.1976 in Augustow (Poland),
1995-2002: culture sciences studies at the University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Diplom
2002-2002: Camer Image Film School in Torun (Poland)
2005-2010: directing studies at dffb (German film and Television School Berlin)
2009: 21:37 – the first feature film (80min)

Filmography Director

ear         Title          Copy format                 Running time
2009         21:37           S16mm/Digibeta              80min.
2011         With/out        RED/Digibeta                5min 30s.
2011         Slam it!        MiniDV/Digibeta             27min.

Technical Details
Country of production: Germany 
Year of production: 2011         
Genre: comedy                                   
Running time: 5m.30s.                
Shooting format: RED           
Copy format: Digibeta                       
Frame rate: 25 fps                     
Aspect ratio: 16:9