Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen

Novalis is ubiquitous in these four episodes all set in the small town of Sangerhausen; apart from the first, which unfolds during the poet’s youth, the chosen time is the present. The protagonists: a maid, a cleaner, an Iranian filmmaker who may once have been a student of Abbas Kiarostami and a man offering unorthodox guided tours. These stories offer no great climaxes, but rather constant discoveries in the details observed by the camera and the allusions that arise from the various plots and anecdotes they contain. Two lovers run off with horses to join the French Revolution; a woman steals a car for love; a filmmaker records a ghost; a tourist outing ends in a cave where time functions different and it is possible to converse with spectres. The characters encounter each another by chance and feel unexpected affinities when they do. The solidarity of the workers of the world invoked at the beginning is discreetly forged: it is not the poet’s magical idealism that hovers over the story, but rather the Marxist tradition that obsesses Julian Radlmaier. And yet he films flowers and cherries like stanzas of a poem written with the light of the world. (Roger Koza)

In the presence of Julian Radlmaier & Cast.

AUDIO DESCRIPTION FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE
Audio description will be provided. More info here.

Julian Radlmaier: EIN GESPENST GEHT UM IN EUROPA (2013), EIN PROLETARISCHES WINTERMÄRCHEN (2014), SELBSTKRITIK EINES BÜRGERLICHEN HUNDES (2017), BLUTSAUGER (2021)