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KINO! Film Salon is a monthly online club to discuss films from Germany.
 
How it works: Each month we choose a German film or series currently available to stream on U.S. platforms, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German film.
 
In our August session, we will talk about Stefan Krohmer’s sultry, sunny melodrama Summer ’04 which trades in the kind of uneasy sensuality that would make Eric Rohmer blush. Martina Gedeck stars as the alluring Miriam, a middle-class libertine who finds her particular strain of urbane permissiveness challenged when her adolescent son brings his provocative young girlfriend into the family vacation idyll. Unabashedly problematic, Summer ’04 bristles with an oddball eroticism that feels especially uncomfortable in the context of a family dynamic. Krohmer’s film asks plenty of awkward questions but has few qualms about leaving most of them unanswered. 

“It’s an unusual drama, one grounded in the difficulty inherent in intimate relationships, in attempting to read and assess the behavior of others. The unpredictability of its plot demands considerable suspension of disbelief, but if you stick it out to the unforeseen conclusion, the rewards are there.” (Los Angeles Times)

Hosted by Jim Kolmar

Jim programs for SXSW and Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU). He has participated in numerous international festival juries, panels, and committees.
 
KINO! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.

Sommer ’04
Dir. Stefan Krohmer
Germany, 2006
97 minutes
With Martina Gedeck, Robert Seeliger, Svea Lohde