The Forest For The Trees - Wellington Film Society
10 Kent Terrace, Mt Victoria, Wellington
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Maren Ade, Germany 2003 81 mins, HD, M, coarse language.
Maren Ade’s fantastic debut feature, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, is a compactly-crafted, disarmingly-honest account of an idealistic young teacher drifting comically out of her professional and personal depths.
That it was Ade’s thesis project as a student at the Munich Academy for Film and Television – completed when she was just 26 – makes its maturity and directorial aplomb all the more impressive. Melanie (played with cringe-worthy perfection by Eva Löbau) is a mousey twentysomething hoping for a fresh start in southwest Germany after being offered a teaching post mid-year.
She begins to unravel when her progressive but undisciplined teaching style fails, her colleagues ostracize her, and her disastrous misreadings of a trendy neighbour’s social cues jeopardize a desperately sought-after female friendship.
Shot on digital video in Ade’s hometown of Karlsruhe (where both her parents work as teachers), the film has a lo-fi, home-movie quality that adds to its intimacy, unease, and unexpectedly sublime denouement. - The Cinematheque.
Screened in co-operation with the Goethe Institute.
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