European Films

German director Caroline Link is readying her new project Im Winter ein Jahr (lit. In Winter, A Year) for a summer production start in Munich. The director won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003 for Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa). Link’s new film is a German-language adaptation of the Scott Campbell novel Aftermath. It will star Perfume: The Story of a Murderer co-stars Karoline Herfurth and Corinna Harfouch as mother and daughter Richter, who both try to cope with the death of their 19-year-old son and brother, which occured a year before the film starts.

 

What will help the Richters in their mourning is a request by the mother (Harfouch) to have a portrait painted of her two children by the painter Max Hollander, played by Bavarian veteran actor Josef Bierbichler (Winterreise/Winter Journey, Hierankl). He asks the 22-year-old Lilli (Herfurth), a talented young dancer, to come by in his workshop for the portrait, something which she initially dislikes but gradually comes to terms with as she herself tries to fathom her relationship with her brother. Gradually a special relationship develops between the painter and his subject.

Link was only the second German director to receive an Oscar for a film in the Best Foreign Language Film category after Volker Schlöndorff’s triumph in the same category for Cannes-winner Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum). Link won the prize in 2003 and had been previously nominated for the same prize six years earlier for the musical drama Jenseits der Stille (Beyond Silence). Just last week, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck became the third German with an Oscar for his widely praised Stasi spy drama Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). As with her previous features, Link herself wrote the screenplay for Im Winter ein Jahr. No possible release date has been announced yet.