A number of German films and co-productions will also be shown at the Cork International Film Festival in 2024 with the support of the Goethe-Institut Irland.
PROGRAMME
Fri 08 November 2024 | Online Screening | all day available
Ivo is a palliative care nurse. She has formed a very close friendship with one of her patients, Solveigh, and also Solveigh’s husband, with whom Ivo sleeps with in hotels. But when Solveigh asks for Ivo’s help to end her life, cracks appear in Ivo’s routine. A moving drama about life-changing decisions.
Petra Kelly was one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. For her, feminism, environmental activism, peace and human rights issues were one. She was the figurehead of the peace movement in the 70s and 80s and co-founder of the first Green Party in Germany. She fought relentlessly for radical social change, feminism, disarmament and a society at one with nature. Petra Kelly firmly believed that a single person could change the world. Her far-sighted transnational thinking and global action, her commitment to peace and human rights beyond the East-West bloc thinking of the time – all of this makes her an icon for the 21st century.
Filmmaker Doris Metz will discuss Petra's legacy and her close relationship with Ireland with Gisela Holfter, director of the Centre for Irish-German Studies at University of Limerick.
Wed 13 November 2024 | 6pm
The Arc Cinema - Screen 6, The Arc Cinema, N Main St, Centre, Cork, T12 KN88
Shahid Dir.: Narges Kalhor, Germany, 2024, 84 min.
A film that’s part reality, part fiction, part theatre and part musical!
Director Narges Shahid Kalhor wants to remove 'Shahid”'from her surname. Passed down from a great-grandparent, the name means 'martyr'. She hires an actor to play herself and then, her heroic great-grandfather, who was given the title of martyr 100 years ago in Iran, turns up with his dancing friends to try and dissuade her. The Bavarian district administration sends her to a psychologist, who also has a difficult name…
In the end, everyone is hindered: the director by bureaucracy, the actor by the director’s demands, her great-grandfather by his descendant’s determination and the film by itself. The winds of history blow her round and round in circles, as stereotypes and privileges are shaken up, both performatively and inventively. All while having a lot of fun along the way.
A tragicomic, defiant act of self-empowerment in exile.
Wed 13 November 2024 | 8:30pm and Sun 17 November 2024 | 6:15pm
The Arc Cinema - Screen 2, The Arc Cinema, N Main St, Centre, Cork, T12 KN88
Rabia Dir.: Mareike Engelhardt, France/ germany/ belgium, 2023, 100 min.
Jessica, a 19-year-old French girl leaves her a country for Syria, thinking that the humiliations of cheap labor will give way to a life of leisure in the villa showed off by her friend’s future husband, an Isis fighter. But in lieu of the handsome groom in the pictures, what they find in Raqqa is a locked house full of other young women from around the world. In order to survive, she becomes an assistant to the iron-fisted director, Madame, who renames her Rabia exerts a powerful fascination over her. How far beyond the limits of her convictions will Rabia accept to go?
In this assured feature debut, German director Mareike Engelhardt turns to fiction to tell the incredible, yet sadly true, story of what happened to too many young girls, lured by Isis propaganda, after they ran away from their home country.
Filmmaker Mareike Englahradt will be in attendance to talk about her movie with the audience.
Like many couples, Maria and Christiane share a dream of having a child of their own. But physical limitations, medical issues and a discriminatory system that raises legal matters make this a far more challenging undertaking.
The fact that this documentary is impossible not to love owes a lot to its director, Judith Beuth. She filmed the couple over 10 years, with the candour allowed by friendship but also with respect and lucidity, including about her own relation to the subject matter. A winning combination rewarded with the capture of special moments and the rare observation of the balance of dependency in a relationship under tremendous stress. Again and again they must ask themselves: how far are we willing to go?
In a windswept Somali fishing village, Mamargade, a single father, works odd jobs to provide a better life for his son, Cigaal. Araweelo, his sister, comes back to live with them after her divorce. Each pursues their own ambitions in a country wrecked by civil war, natural disasters and the deadly threat posed by the U.S. drones constantly buzzing overhead.
On many occasions throughout this patient testament to love and resilience, multi-awarded director Mo Harawe could be tempted to sacrifice the truth of his protagonists for the sake of narrative shortcuts. He fends them all off and is rewarded, and us with him, with the kind of intense, slow burn emotional build-up that only such self-assured filmmaking can produce.
Mo Harawe emigrated from Somalia to Austria in 2009. After training as a filmmaker, he began to explore life in the country he left behind, using cinema to bridge the gap between the memories of his homeland and the way Somalia is perceived from Europe. His awarded short films signalled him as a powerful new voice in the film world.
The premiere will be presented by the filmmaker and followed by a Q&A.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cork International Film Festival will also present a selection of European short films from the home countries of twelve members of EUNIC Ireland (European Union National Institutes for Culture): EUNIC Short Shorts from Europe with Welf Reinhart's short film "Treasures" as the German contribution presented by Goethe-Institut Irland.
Mo 11 November 2024 | 6pm
Arc Cinema, North Main Street, Cork
Admission free, but advance booking required
Booking here
The German programme at the 69th Cork International Film Festival 2024 is supported by the Goethe-Institut Irland.
