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Finsterworld is a 2013 German motion picture drama directed by Frauke Finsterwalder, her debut feature film. Co-written by Finsterwalder and Christian Kracht, it follows interconnected, parallel stories over the course of one day in Germany.
| Finsterworld | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Frauke Finsterwalder |
| Written by | Frauke Finsterwalder Christian Kracht |
| Starring | Margit Carstensen Sandra Hüller Corinna Harfouch Christoph Bach Carla Juri Jakub Gierszał |
Release date |
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| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
The title Finsterworld is a play on Finsterwalder's surname, which can be translated to English as "resident of the dark forest".
Finsterworld is an ensemble piece with twelve main characters[1] who are gradually shown to interconnect with each other. These include a pedicurist, three generations of the Sandberg family, and a documentarist and her policeman boyfriend, who is secretly a furry.
- Christoph Bach as Lehrer Nickel
- Margit Carstensen as Frau Sandberg
- Jakub Gierszał as Maximillian Sandberg
- Corinna Harfouch as Inga Sandberg
- Sandra Hüller as Franziska Feldenhoven
- Carla Juri as Natalie
- Johannes Krisch as Einsiedler
- Michael Maertens as Claude Petersdorf
- Dieter Meier as Furrier
- Max Pellney as Jonas
- Leonard Scheicher as Dominik
- Bernard Schütz as Georg Sandberg
- Ronald Zehrfeld as Tom
The film was shot at various locations in Bavaria and Tanzania.
Its world premiere was at the 2013 Montréal World Film Festival.[2][3]
It opened in German cinemas in October 2013, in Austria in January 2014 and in Switzerland in March 2014.[4]
The film features an original score by composer Michaela Melián, singer of the German new wave band FSK, and is bookended by the song "The Wind" by Cat Stevens.
The Hollywood Reporter praised its "sophisticated screenplay", "beautiful camerawork" and "very solid line-up of actors".[2] Die Welt called it a "masterpiece",[5] while Letterboxd writes "Somewhere between a sylvan paradise lost and a realpolitik nightmare come true lies Finsterworld's Germany. Its fantastical inhabitants feel so familiar, it's uncanny. They're neighbors, fathers and boys you went to school with. It hits too close to home. Perhaps we should bury that movie deep in the forest where nobody will ever find it. Or perhaps we should allow its haunting veracity to breathe."[6]
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It won the Bronze Zenith at the 2013 Montréal World Film Festival, as well as the 2013 TV-Spielfilm-Award at Germany’s Cologne Conference.[7] At the 2013 Zurich Film Festival, it won the Critics' Choice award, and prize for the best German-language feature film. The film was nominated for best fiction debut at Camerimage festival in Poland.[8] It has also garnered nominations for best feature film debut at Munich’s 2013 Filmfest München and three nominations for the 2013 Preis der deutschen Filmkritik, winning best German screenplay,[9] as well as five nominations for the Deutscher Filmpreis, with Sandra Hüller winning best supporting actress. In 2014, it won best female directed film at Edinburgh International Film Festival, as well as a nomination for the Fipresci Prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
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