World premieres from the 70th Berlin International Film Festival to screen in Wroclaw, after which the New Horizons Association will distribute the films in Poland.
Berlin Alexanderplatz, dir. Burhan Qurbani
Berlin Alexanderplatz divided audiences at the Berlin festival - the contemporary reading of Alfred Döblin’s novel (previously adapted for the screen by the legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder) begins as a refugee drama, but then turns into an intense, epic parable (over three hours arranged in five chapters) of preserving humanity in a predatory, bestial and inhuman world. It is a film that leaves few viewers indifferent – it repels with a controversial message and impresses with brilliant visuals.
DAU Natasha, dir. Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Jekaterina Oertel
The monumental, fourteen-hour DAU by Ilja Chrzanowski and Ekaterina Oertel is a radical experiment at the intersection of science, art, politics, and sociology. A research institute was built in Kharkov especially for the needs of the project - following the example of closed Soviet-institute cities. For two years, several hundred people lived and worked in the meticulously reconstructed reality of the USSR. Once in a while, a film crew entered their lives, and constructed the script based on actual tensions, events, and relationships. The first part of the project was included in the Berlinale competition: DAU. Natasha, is an intense and extreme psychodrama about an employee of the institute's canteen. Jürgen Jürges's camera (awarded at the festival for outstanding artistic achievements) in endless, trance-inducing shots observes the process of Natasha's involvement in the totalitarian mechanisms governing the institute.
Servants (Služobníci), dir. Ivan Ostrochovský
This suspenseful noir cinema is set in Czechoslovakia at the end of communist rule. The black and white film (sensational, breathtaking images by Yuri Chlpik) takes place in a monastery, visited by two young seminarians whose innocence and idealism get unexpectedly tested when they find themselves amidst a power struggle between the state and church. Servants is a great treaty on institutions that, no matter who they serve, are always willing to sacrifice the individual on the altar of their longevity.