Hannes Bruun

Two years after the Panama Papers scandal, two investigative journalists at Germany’s largest newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, are ready with a series of new revelations while researchin the assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia and a mysterious arms dealer linked to the Iranian nuclear missile programme. When a secret video gets leaked to them in 2019, the journalists have the opportunity to uncover a new scandal, today known as ‘Ibiza-Gate’, involving the Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.

Elli is an android and lives with a man she calls her father. Together they drift through the summer. During the day they swim in the pool and at night he takes her to bed. She shares his memories and anything else he programs her to recall. Memories that mean everything to him but nothing to her. Yet, one night she sets off into the woods following a fading echo… The story of a machine and the ghosts we all carry within us.

For teenage twins Robert and Elena, a weekend can seem endless yet still fly by. Time almost stands still while discussing philosophy, lying in a blissful cornfield near a remote gas station. They are in their own little world, a twin world of twin games and twin love. A confined world where emotions rise, where pressure mounts into rage… The turmoil of adolescence.

3 a.m., Zhongzheng Street, Taipei. The traffic roars constantly through the metropolis. Bordered by a multi-lane street and overlooked by a big freeway lies “Little Plates with Rice”, a late-night eatery where Mr. Kuo and his wife, Mrs. Lin, cook for the night owls. For the taxi drivers, the shop owners, the tattoo artist next door, for families and young lovers and even for the street dog still waiting for his owner’s return, this eatery is a refuge, a promise of a warm bowl of rice. One morning, riding back from the market, Mr. Kuo takes a different exit on the highway and goes to the sea.

Alan, Jan and Liya, born in Kurdistan, raised in Stuttgart, want to grant their deceased mother her final wish: to be buried beside her husband, who died in the war, in their home village in Kurdistan. The clan objects, but the three set out anyway. A risky journey to a homeland wracked by strife.

A finely-woven tapestry, unifying things that are incommensurate. What is it about? Something that we all know, but which resonates differently with each of us, that cannot be put into words. You could call it our inner hum.

<위대한 침묵>으로 한국 관객들에게 익숙한 필립 그로닝 감독의 <경관의 아내>는 즉물적인 윤리극이다. 영화는 59개의 장으로 구성된 짧은 삽화들을 연결하는 별난 구조를 가지고 있다. 삽화들 사이에는 챕터의 시작과 끝을 알리는 간자막이 들어가고, 느린 템포의 페이드 인, 페이드 아웃으로 장이 열리고 이행된다. 한 경찰관 가정을 무대로 외부의 폭력으로부터 필사적으로 아이를 지키려는 아내와 평화를 파괴하는 남편의 폭력이 선연한 대비를 이룬다. 인물들의 행위 뒤에 놓인 심리적인 동기를 생략한 채, 그로닝 감독은 생명을 키우고 가꾸는 일, 그것을 억누르고 파괴하는 일의 공존에 대해 질문한다. 괴이한 가족 이야기라고 할 수도 있겠지만, <경관의 아내>는 폭력과 파시즘의 발아 과정을 치밀한 관찰을 통해 묘사한다. 칼로 베어낸 것 같은 날카로운 프레이밍, 극도의 침묵과 서늘한 공포가 교차하면서 강한 여운을 남긴다. 샹탈 애커만의 <잔느 딜망>에 필적하는 충격을 전하는 작품으로 2013년 베니스국제영화제에서 공개되었을 때 거센 찬반론을 낳았다. (2014년 15회 전주국제영화제/ 장병원)