The 21st German Film Festival (GFF) is back!
From 2 to 12 November 2017, the festival will present over 30 films spanning art-house, comedy, documentary and music films.
The 30 films will screen in several venues. One of them is the National Museum of Singapore. Eleven films will screen at the National Museum. For free. Yes, you read that right.
And free does not mean lousy. In fact, some of these films are the festival's best films.
We start off with Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky's Paradise, a stunning and austere black and white film set in the final days of World War 2 about the relationship between Olga – a beautiful aristocratic Russian emigre and member of the French resistance, Jules – a corrupt French police collaborator, and Helmut – a naive but high-ranking German SS officer.
Paradise premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2016 where it won the Silver Lion for Best Director.
Next up is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun. It is the first of Fassbinder's trilogy of films on women set during Germany's post-war economic boom era.
The main character in this film, Maria, is an ambitious and strong-willed woman who, despite her professional success which she achieved through manipulation and back-stabbing, is unable to find personal happiness. Fassbinder intends the film to be a critique of West Germany's abandonment of human values in her road to economic and material success.
Finally, we have the legendary Werner Herzog's epic adventure drama, Fitzcarraldo. The film, which stars regular collaborator Klaus Kinsky, follows the journey of an Irish rubber baron known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon Basin. The film is famous for its tough production conditions, which was captured by documentary filmmaker Les Blanks in Burden of Dreams. The film went on to win the award for Best Diector at Cannes Film Festival.
These are just three out of the many films the German Film Festival has to offer. So be sure to check out their other line-up of films here: https://www.goethe.de/ins/sg/en/kul/sup/fes.html