Byron Bay is a veritable feast of multicultural movies – and next weekend it’s the Audi Festival of German Films at the Palace, with everything from comedy to cyber crime writes Digby Hildreth. Plus we have three double passes to give away to a session of your choice…
A richly dark thriller about cyber crime and youthful hackers opens the short Audi Festival of German Films in Byron Bay next Friday. Who Am I – No System is Safe moves with the pace and confidence of a rock video, and contains many of the same defiant themes, as its young protagonists – idealists, outsiders and, in the case of Benjamin, an “invisible freak” – use their cyber-skills to play super-heroes. But the more ambitious they become, the more they are drawn into the “dark net”, a world of shifting alliances, brilliant but manipulative players and murderous organised criminals. After an attack on German’s principal security service, Benjamin’s life is in danger.He gives himself up to the authorities, and enters an elaborate negotiation with his nemesis. But, as in all the best psycho-thrillers, all is not as it seems. It’s compelling stuff, full of twists and turns.
Who Am I – No System is Safe – a richly dark thriller
Other genres are covered by the remaining four films in this all too-brief festival.
Saturday opens with Ruby Red, a teen adventure and love story based on the best-selling trilogy for young adults of the same name. We have time travel, a sinister family secret implicating a young woman in ancient cultish mysteries and rituals, and a Cinderella fable and love story all in one. It starts with a chase as Charlotte and Gideon try to flee the sinister Druidic figures who will stop at nothing to protect the traditions of the Temple, and the pace does not let up.
Ruby Red – a teen adventure and love story
The rich feast continues with Beloved Sisters, a period romance in which two aristocratic sister fall in love with the same man – who happens to be the writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, a hugely romantic figure in the era leading up the French Revolution. The film is the work of one of Germany’s foremost auteurs, Dominik Graf. Sustained by the full artistic range of the actors Hannah Herzsprung, Florian Stetter and Henriette Confurius, he has created a timeless study of love.
The Whole Shebang at 6pm on Saturday is a melancholic comedy about mothers and daughters, love’s ups and downs and the comparative advantages and shortcomings of the alternative versus the middle-class ways of life. Apple spent some of her childhood in a tent at a hippie beach in Spain, her mother running topless and wild in an age of free love: mother Ingrid returns 30 years later to find the beach now groaning under the weight of glitzy new hotels and mass tourism. Torremolinos is not the paradise she remembers – and there is baggage to be unpacked from her irresponsible past. Enter Apple, love life a mess, lonely and with an ailing and depressed dog for company …
Finally on Saturday night is the provocatively titled Suck Me Shakespeer, an outrageous comedy and Germany’s highest grossing film of 2013. Ex-con Zeki’s buried stash of loot has been built over by part of a new school. He signs on a janitor but is mistakenly given a class to teach – and unruly rabble it takes all his criminal enterprise to bring under control. Amid all the mayhem, a sweet love story gently unfurls.
In other centres around the country the festival runs for two weeks, with nearly 50 films on offer. The Byron Bay offering is just a taste of what German cinema has to offer – and it’s enough to make one ask for more.
The Audi Festival of German Films is on at the Palace Cinema in Byron Bay, with the opening night film screening at 7pm on Friday, May 29. To win a double pass to a Festival session simply leave a comment in the box below, or on our Verandah Magazine Facebook page.
Visit palacecinemas or call 02 6680 8555 to buy tickets.
