21st German Film Festival 2017 (Golden Village)
In Time Of Fading Light
Rating
PG13 Some Sexual References
Language
German with English subtitles
Director
Matti Geschonneck
Cast
Bruno Ganz, Hildegard Schmahl, Sylvester Groth, Evgenia Dodina, Natalia Belitski, Alexander Fehling
Synopsis
East Berlin, in the early autumn of 1989: The Powileit family celebrates the 90th birthday of Wilhelm (Bruno Ganz), a former resistance fighter, returned expatriate and incorrigible Stalinist. His wife Charlotte (Hildegard Schmahl) is hosting the festivities where neighbours, acquaintances and dignitaries deliver flowers and give speeches as if nothing were amiss in the outside world. But someone is missing, and he is the only one who, in Charlotte’s opinion, knows how to set up the extending table for the cold buffet: Sascha (Alexander Fehling), her grandson. No one suspects that Sascha has fled to West Germany just a few days ago. Through the eyes of Sascha’s father, Kurt (Sylvester Groth) – a historian and Gulag survivor– we experience this film as a snapshot in time that depicts the disintegration of a family and a political system.