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This July Franka Potente, best known as the running redhead in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, and for being chased alongside Matt Damon in the first two Bourne-films, turned fifty. A good moment to show the first film she wrote and directed, not only making a bold mid-life career move but also switching to a decidedly more contemplative mode.
After more than 17 years in prison, Marvin Hacks, now 40, makes his way home - on his skateboard and in the tracksuit – relics of the moment of his arrest as a young man. Home is Newhall, a small, non-descript town in California, where he settles in with his sick mother in the run-down house of his childhood. Marvin soon realizes that the murder for which he went to prison has not been forgotten and he faces the open hatred of the family of his victim.
Franca Potente takes her time to tell the classic story of the convict’s return home. She gives space to her first-rate cast, including Oscar winner Kathy Bates, to develop their characters and their relations which each other. As we watch them, we also take in the sun-lit small-town locations, which camera man Frank Griebe, who also worked with Tom Tykwer, has imbued with their own atmosphere. But he has avoided romanticising the misery of the place. Despite the sunshine Newhall remains recognizable as a depressed town, but it is the only place where Marvin can find his redemption.
Germany, France, Netherlands 2020. 100 min., in English.
Written and directed by Franka Potente. With Jake McLaughlin, Kathy Bates, Aisling Franciosi, Derek Richardson, James Jordan, Lil Rel Howery, Stephen Root.
Franka Potente was born in Münster in 1974. She achieved her international breakthrough with Tom Tykwer's worldwide cinema hit Run Lola Run. She went on to star in major Hollywood productions such as Blow with Johnny Depp, the Bourne films with Matt Damon and Taboo with Tom Hardy. Potente is also a successful author (Zehn Stories - 2010, Allmählich wird es Tag - 2014). In 2006, she presented her short film Der die die Tollkirsche ausgräbt at the Berlinale. Her feature film debut Home premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2020 and was released in cinemas in Germany in 2021. (source: Augenschein Filmproduktion, slightly edited, for a full a more extensive biography visit filmportal.de)
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