Four films from the Waterkant at the Munich Film Festival

The Peace Prize of German Film - The Bridge will be awarded again this year as part of the Munich Film Festival. In the national category, the prize goes to Directors Lars Kraume forThe silent classroom. Directors Katja Benrath receives the Young Talent Award for her Hamburg Media School graduation filmWatu Wote.

Maria KöpfCEO of Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein: "Tino Hanekamp's novel 'So Was Von Da' has become standard reading for all neighbourhood goers in Hamburg. We are now eagerly awaiting the screening of Jakob Lass' adaptation of the novel at the Munich Filmfest - and can hardly wait for the subsequent Hamburg premiere. With Margarethe von Trotta's homage to Ingmar Bergman and the two wonderfully quirky documentaries 'Of Bees and Flowers' and 'Fly Rocket Fly', the North is very well represented at the Munich Film Festival. Our congratulations also go to 'The Silent Classroom' Director Lars Kraume and the 'Watu Wote' team led by Katja Benrath from Schleswig-Holstein."

More about the films

New German Cinema" series In Jakob Lass' filmSo What From There (C-Films, Hamburg) is all about Hamburg, St Pauli and New Year's Eve: Oskar (played by Niklas Bruhn) runs a music club at the end of the Reeperbahn. His life was a party, but the party is over: the club has to close and Oskar is heavily in debt. The club's last night becomes the wildest party in Hamburg, where all of Oskar's friends and enemies will come together. As the main motif for the film adaptation of Tino Hanekamp's novel of the same name, the Südpol cultural centre on the former depot of the Hamburg waterworks in Hammerbrook was temporarily transformed into the "Rakete" club.

When urban neo-romantics in search of the simple life take up residence in the countryside and meet Hartz IV recipients in the structurally weak neighbourhood, worlds collide. Directors Lola Randl sees room for shared adventures, utopias, play, fun and love. Together with her family, she moved from Berlin to the Uckermarck region to live a more authentic life. More and more people have followed. How do people define work and love in the countryside? What changes in relationships? These are two of the questions that the wonderfully quirky DocumentaryOf bees and flowers (Detailfilm, Hamburg), with Lola Randl in front of and behind the camera.

Series "Lights! Camera! Action!" Ingmar Bergman and Margarethe von Trotta meet in person in Munich in 1977. Both were at a key moment in their lives: Bergman was at a turning point after his tax evasion from Sweden, von Trotta at the beginning of her career as a young filmmaker. Now, 40 years later and after 24 of her own films, she is dedicating herself to Bergman in a cinematic search for traces. There is still great respect for approaching her master. Nevertheless, the filmmaker sets out inIn search of Ingmar Bergman (C-Films (Germany), Hamburg) on a very personal journey through Bergman's universe, his films and his life. The film celebrated its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Spotlight" series Directors Oliver Schwehm tells the story in the DocumentaryFly Rocket Fly (Lunabeach, Hamburg) tells the amazing story of Lutz Kayser, a Swabian engineer who, together with a close-knit group of engineers, founds the world's first private space company. Advised by Wernher von Braun, this early start-up company developed a low-cost rocket in the 1970s: "Low cost instead of high tech" was the principle - and so a windscreen wiper motor was sometimes used for the valve control. But what began as an adventure gradually turned into a nightmare.

Photo: So what of it (DCM/Gordon Timpen)