ARTICLE

One of Singapore’s longest-running foreign film festival returns to The Projector for its 27th Edition!

By InCinemas / 15 Oct 2024 (Tuesday)

Returning for its 27th edition from 17 October to 3 November, the German Film Festival, one of Singapore’s longest-running foreign film festival, is back at The Projector!

This year, they're proud to present a selection showcasing the breadth and diversity of German cinema – from contemporary features to celebrated classics, a much-loved childhood adaptation, and a brand new short film programme. With 16 films, The Projector will showcase 12 selections, including new features and a special program focused on Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, exploring themes that range from historical and personal to contemporary and political.

This year’s festival highlights acclaimed titles such as The Zone of Interest (with 57 wins and 157 nominations and multiple Oscar wins) and Dying (winner of the 2024 Silver Berlin Bear). With limited screenings per film, it’s a rare opportunity to catch these festival favourites on the big screen!

Shahid

Iranian director Narges Kalhor wants to remove “Shahid” from her family name - a legacy inherited from a great-grandparent, meaning “martyr”. Intent on thumbing her nose at a past that belongs to both a patriarchal and bygone era, she hires Baharak – an Iranian actress who, like her, sought refuge in Germany – to play the role of Narges Shahid Kalhor as she goes through the process of changing her name.

However, this venture involves overcoming a number of obstacles. Her great-grandfather and his cohort of devout dancers follow her closely everywhere she goes, the administration is a Kafkaesque nightmare, Baharak and Narges no longer have the same conception of the film, and her therapist – in spite of being named Ribbentrop – struggles to understand why she wishes to change her name.

Constantly oscillating between documentary and fiction, borrowing from the codes of performance, musical comedy and thrillers, this film is a delightful satire on the need to resist ideologies and confront what has been inherited from the past in order to form one’s own identity. Shahid is an explosion of formal freedoms, and Narges Kalhor is undoubtedly one of the most individual and exciting voices working in German cinema today.

Available Date: 17 Oct | Get Tickets

The Universal Theory

Together with his doctoral supervisor, the young physicist Johannes Leinert travelled to a congress in the Swiss Alps in 1962. The lecture by an Iranian scientist on the subject of quantum mechanics is eagerly awaited. When the arrival of the star speaker is delayed, the illustrious company passes the time skiing and with dinner parties – and Johannes gets closer to the mysterious bar pianist Karin, who is frighteningly familiar with his childhood.

But things get even more sinister: bodies are found and vanish into thin air, one of the physicists ages in a strange way, the cloud formations above the spectacular Alpine panorama take on strange shapes, Karin disappears. Johannes begins to investigate, as well as two bizarre inspectors from the Swiss police force. In brilliant black-and-white images and peppered with reminiscences from across film history, the film tells a thriller story that is as complex as it is exciting about the space-time continuum that holds the world we know together - and perhaps others as well.

Available Date: 18 Oct | Get Tickets

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

Don Lope de Aguirre, a ruthless Spanish conquistador, vies for power while part of an expedition in Peru to find El Dorado, the mythical seven cities of gold. Accompanied by his daughter, Flores, Aguirre faces off against his superior, Don Pedro de Ursua, and grows increasingly volatile after seizing control of the group. As Aguirre presses deeper into the Amazonian jungle, he descends further into madness.

Aguirre was the first of five collaborations between Herzog and Kinski.

Available Date: 19 Oct | Get Tickets

The Fox

The Fox is the true story of Franz Streitberger, Adrian Goiginger's great-grandfather, a motorcycle courier for the Austrian Army who was soon drafted into the German Wehrmacht. At the beginning of the Second World War, the introverted young soldier encounters a wounded fox cub, which he then looks after as if it were his own child and takes with him to occupied France. Through this unique friendship with the wild animal, his own past as an outcast farmer's son, which he has always run away from, slowly catches up with him...

Available Date: 19 Oct | Get Tickets

Sad Jokes

Joseph and Sonya share an intimate friendship and their young son, whom they're raising together. While Joseph, a film director, is doubly preoccupied with a new idea for a film and with the aftermath of a previous relationship, Sonya suffers from depression. When she is hospitalised, Joseph must juggle both his everyday commitments and his artistic ambitions.

In his second feature film, author and director Fabian Stumm (Bones and Names) mixes a wide range of emotional tones to create a tragicomic reflection of reality. He was celebrated by the audience and the press at the Munich Film Festival and was awarded two prizes: the New German Cinema Award (Best Director) and the FIPRESCI Prize. Sad Jokes is absurd and banal, hopeful and touching or – as in real life – all of the above at once.

Available Date: 20 Oct | Get Tickets

The Zone of Interest

In 1943, the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife, Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house right next to the concentration and extermination camp he helped create. The Zone of Interest delves into the profound moral complexities of life within a Nazi concentration camp, exploring themes of power, love, and human survival.

Available dates: 25 Oct & 1 Nov | Get Tickets

Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer

Master filmmaker, auteur, poet, truth seeker, pith helmeted explorer, brand, meme, actor, lauded voice artiste, doomsayer, legend…Werner Herzog.

The man who had a 320-ton steamboat hauled over a steep hill in Peru, who hypnotises his actors, climbs down into volcanoes, talks to murderers on death row, cooks and eats his own shoe and was shot at. He’s the man who lends his voice to The Simpsons, stars in blockbusters such as the Mandalorian and the man – who in a sort of magical act – walked from Munich to Paris to prevent the death of a woman film critic he greatly admired.

It is stories such as these that have made this remarkable director a cult figure the world over. With exclusive behind-the-scenes access into Herzog’s everyday life, rare archive material and in-depth interviews with the man himself and celebrated collaborators – including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman, and his wife Lena Herzog – we are given an exciting glimpse into his work process and personal life. For the first time and exclusively to mark Herzog’s 80th birthday, Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer presents a comprehensive portrait of an iconic artist of our time.

Available Date: 26 Oct | Get Tickets

Fitzcarraldo

Opera-loving European Brian Fitzgerald lives in a small Peruvian city. Better known as Fitzcarraldo, this foreigner is obsessed with building an opera house in his town and decides that to make his dream a reality he needs to make a killing in the rubber business. In order to become a successful rubber baron, Fitzcarraldo hatches an elaborate plan that calls for a particularly impressive feat -- bringing a massive boat over a mountain with the help of a band of natives.

Available Date: 26 Oct | Get Tickets

Nosferatu the Vampyre

Sent to Transylvania to negotiate for a house purchased by the monstrous Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker leaves his idyllic town, turning a deaf ear to his wife Lucy’s ill omens. Soon, Jonathan finds himself trapped, and Dracula descends from the mountains towards Lucy, with death and plague in tow.

Revisiting F.W. Murnau’s classic, Werner Herzog made a unique and elemental take on the Dracula story. This haunting vision of life, death, and superstition is aglow with deep color, and finds pity for Kinski’s deathless wraith. With the brilliant Isabelle Adjani: the carnal queen of Euro-horror.

Available Date: 31 Oct | Get Tickets

My Best Fiend

My Best Fiend is a film about the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski – utterly puzzling to outsiders – about the deep trust between an actor and a director, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.

In this personal documentary, the director recalls the highs, the lows and the heated quarrels that marked his relationship with Kinski, returning to the very apartment in Munich where they first met and revisiting all the places where they made their films.

Available Date: 1 Nov | Get Tickets

The Empty Grave

To date, tens of thousands of human bones from former colonies remain stored in German museums. It is still unclear how they can be identified and returned. The Empty Grave follows two families on their arduous search for their ancestors.

German-Tanzanian directing duo Agnes Lisa Wegner and Cece Mlay tell of the traces and traumas that the former German colonial rule has left in Tanzanian families and communities to this day - and of the strength and self-empowerment of the bereaved, who are stubbornly fighting for a full investigation. The Empty Grave sheds light on a chapter of German history that has so far received little attention (including in film), and thus makes an important contribution to the long overdue reappraisal of German colonial crimes.

Available Date: 2 Nov | Get Tickets

Dying

Dying follows the very individual members of the Lunies family, who haven’t been a family for a long time. Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) is quietly happy about her demented husband Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer) slowly wasting away in a home.

But her new freedom is short-lived: Diabetes, cancer and kidney failure mean that she doesn't have much time left either. Son Tom (Lars Eidinger), a conductor in his early 40s, is working on a composition called ‘Dying’, while at the same time being made the surrogate father of his ex-girlfriend’s child. And Tom's sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) starts an affair with the married Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld), with whom she shares a love for alcohol. As Death finally turns up on the doorstep, the estranged family members finally meet again.

Available Date: 3 Nov | Get Tickets

This year’s edition of the German Film Festival also includes a brand-new short film programme. Showcasing films from the prestigious Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg Competition, one of Europe’s oldest short film festivals, the lineup dives into themes of liberation, prejudice, and the exploration of lived experiences with fresh, compelling perspectives.

For more information and to book tickets, visit theprojector.sg/germanfilmfestival.

German Film Festival The Projector

Get Showtimes