Summer
in Berlin
A film by Andreas Dresen
"Groundbreaking" - Delfin
Vigil, San Francisco Chronicle
 
Hot
summer. Nike
has a balcony, Katrin
has
a son,
Ronald
drives a truck,
Tina's a waitress,
Oskar and
Helene are old
and alone. At the
beginning, middle
or end of their lives – they
all ask the same
question: Can love
last through
the seasons? Or
is it something affecting
the
brain that
just comes and
goes?
With a sharp eye and
great love for his characters,
director Andreas Dresen
has crafted the story
of two best friends,
who, from their balcony
- between heaven and
earth - gaze down at
their turbulent and difficult
universe, where the right
men are all too often
exactly wrong, and to
get ahead even a good-looking
woman had better be strong. Screenwriter Wolfgang
Kohlhaase, employs his
remarkably light and
crisp style to maintain
a fine balance between
comedy and tragedy, aided
by an outstanding cast,
featuring Inka Friedrich,
Nadja Uhl and Andreas
Schmidt.
Andreas
Dresen’s
SUMMER IN BERLIN is an
enchanting comedy, full
of human warmth, sincerity
and delightful humor
- a film about life.
Playdates |
Cape
of Good Hope
A
film by Mark Bamford
"Wonderful.
. . Nthati Moshesh is riveting. . . one of the best films
at Toronto this year.” - Roger
Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times
A
profoundly optimistic film that arrives on the tenth anniversary
of the
end of Apartheid, Cape of Good
Hope is, in the words of writer-director Mark Bamford, “a movie about people just trying to live.
It’s not about black and white, it’s not about politics,
but about human beings. ”
In the tradition of such rich,
multi-layered, difficult-to-categorize
films as Ang Lee’s
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, and
Robert Altman and John Sayles’s sociological slice-of-life
pictures, Cape of Good Hope
beautifully interweaves a number of storylines, all revolving
around a Cape Town animal rescue
shelter. The new South Africa
is revealed in Cape of Good Hope, a colorful and vibrant mosaic
of love and hope.
The faces of Hope are: Jean Claude
(Eriq Ebouaney of Raoul Peck’s award-winning film, Lumumba),
a refugee from war-torn Congo
who finds himself torn between love and the promise of asylum
in the West; Lindiwe (Nthati
Moshesh), a single mother and
housekeeper trying to make a life for herself and her son while
finding a way out of the township
once and for all; Sharifa (Quanita
Adams) and Habib (David Isaacs), a young Muslim couple unable
to have children of their own yet
desperate to have a family;
Morne (Morne Visser), a recently widowed vet who wants to believe
that true love can strike twice;
and Kate (Debbie Brown), the
emotionally guarded founder of the animal shelter, who seems
to relate better to stray dogs
than to people.
Cape
of Good Hope is the first feature film written and directed
by Mark Bamford—award-winning director of the short film,
Hero—along with his wife, co-writer and producing partner,
Suzanne Kay. Themselves recent
transplants to South Africa, the couple found inspiration for
Cape of Good Hope through their experiences
working as volunteers with children
and refugees.
