Goethe-Kino (Cinema Screening)
Nostalgia for childhood summers, an undercurrent sense of threat, and a good dose of black humour mix in this finely crafted debut about three generations of a family gathering for the summer break in an idyllic garden during a hot and wasp infested summer.
Summer 1976. The still divided Germany is in the grip of a heat wave and a record drought. But for the three generations of a family an oasis in the form of a large green garden is waiting. Here they arrive shortly after the death of the (great) grandmother, who owned the property. Spending the summer in the garden is a tradition. There is space enough for three small summer houses to accommodate everyone. And there is the tree house for the children. The adults sunbathe, the kids get lost in the depths of the densely overgrown grounds. A true idyll, one might say, were it not for the adults’ continuous bickering, the speculations about the sale of the property, the many wasps and the constant news on the radio about the disappearance of a girl.
The Garden (
Sommerhäuser) is a film about how we remember the summers of our childhood - characterised by the familiarity of re-visited places, by holiday traditions, by adventure and boredom, by the rhythm of great heat and the relief of thunderstorms. Sonja Maria Kröner perfectly evokes the atmosphere of these remembered summers in her award-winning debut film. She often lets us take the children's perspective as they roam the garden and neighborhood, seemingly in their own world. There's a good dose of nostalgia in all of this, but it comes combined with a subliminal, indefinable sense of menace that never quite lets go of us. This is also felt by the characters, who at the same time contribute to the tension. Kröner observes them with a sharp, at times sarcastic gaze, which in turn is met by the cross-generational ensemble's excellent performances.
Germany 2017, Farbe, 97 mins. With English subtitles.
Director: Sonja Maria Kröner. With Thomas Loibl, Laura Tonke, Ursula Werner, Günther Maria Halmer, Christine Schorn, Mavie Hörbiger
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Sonja Maria Kröner was born in Munich in 1979. She studied German literature and philosophy, before enrolling at the Münchner Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF) in 2003. She went on to direct several shorts, and in 2009, she received a stipend of the Kirch Stiftung and the HFF for her project Six Doors: In 2010, the 80-minute-long media installation – which presents six women in different life stages in the form of a peep show – was part of an exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Kröner's graduation short "Zucchiniblüten" (2010) screened at the 2012 Hofer Filmtage.Sonja Maria Kröner's feature film debut Sommerhäuser (The Garden) premiered at the 2017 Munich Film Festival, where the family drama garnered awards for direction and production. (Source: filmportal.de)
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