Registration
The German Film Office is pleased to present Anna Sofie Hartmann’s award-winning film Giraffe as its last German Movie Night of 2021. Please join us at the Goethe-Institut New York for a special in-person screening, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker and curator Sophie Cavoulacos.

As construction on a tunnel between Denmark and Germany begins, the present sets off toward the future. Ethnologist Dara documents the buildings that will soon be demolished. Young Lucek and his crew set up the construction site. Käthe ferries people back and forth between the two countries. Birte and Leif give up a home that has been in their family for generations. Agnes’ life is still palpable in her diary and in the objects and walls of her house that will soon disappear. A Danish summer: long days turn into blue nights. People meet, then part ways again.

Giraffe celebrated its international premiere at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival in 2019.

“Anna Sofie Hartmann’s ruminative film ‘Giraffe’ poignantly explores that feeling of place and belonging, together with the evanescence of our impact on those who follow us. It’s a film of big themes on an intimate scale that lovingly acknowledges the unimaginable wealth of stories inside everyone we encounter, while also looking at how we negotiate the place of memory in our lives… While the film has a welcome specificity, its themes are universally profound.” (Jay Weissberg, Variety)

Giraffe
Dir. Anna Sofie Hartmann
With Lisa Loven Kongsli, Jakub Gierszał, Mariusz Feldman, Przemysław Mazurek, Janusz Chojnacki, Piotr Olszański, Andrzej Wicher, Piotr Jurczyk, Robert Płachta, Mirosław Piorunek, and Maren Eggert
Germany/Denmark, 2019
87 minutes

Anna Sofie Hartmann grew up in Nakskov, Denmark, and studied at the German Film und Television Academy Berlin. Her first feature film Limbo (2014) was nominated for the European Film Academy’s European Discovery Award in 2015. Giraffe is Hartmann’s second feature. It received the Viennale’s FIPRESCI Award and was selected by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center for the 2020 edition of New Directors/New Films. Hartmann lives in Berlin and is currently a fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. 

Sophie Cavoulacos is Associate Curator in the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art, where she organizes moving image programming and exhibitions.