The Wuerzburg International Film Festival is delighted to announce a very special guest for its 51st edition: The multi-award-winning film director Andreas Dresen, one of the most renowned directors of German-language film. He has won several Bavarian and German film awards as well as international prizes at film festivals such as Cannes, Chicago and Karlovy Vary and is popular with critics and audiences alike. He was already a guest in Wuerzburg in 1999.
Andreas Dresen, born in 1963, began his career as a filmmaker in the late GDR. After studying directing at the Konrad Wolf Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg, he quickly made a name for himself. His early work around the time of reunification illustrates his precise eye for the problems of social upheaval at the time, but also for the hope that this upheaval triggered.
All his works are characterized by authenticity, by closeness to people and the realities of their lives; he shows the social and personal challenges of his characters with great empathy. His protagonists are often people on the margins of society or people in special life situations. This focus runs through many of his works, from “Nachtgestalten” (1999) and “Halbe Treppe” (2002) to “Sommer vorm Balkon” (2005). Dresen preferred to work with non-professional actors, especially at the beginning of his career, and largely dispensed with artificial dramaturgy, which lends his films an unadorned immediacy.
A central theme in Dresen’s early films is the GDR and the transformation process following reunification. Films like “Stilles Land” deal with the uprootedness and insecurity that many people experienced during this time. Dresen manages not to fall into clichés, but to show the complexity of personal and collective experiences. He tells stories of people who have to assert themselves in the midst of change – often with tragedy, but also with quiet humor.
The retrospective shows a selection of films relating to the GDR and the upheavals in the new federal states following reunification.
Stilles Land (1992)
Andreas Dresen’s debut film is set in the turbulent autumn days of 1989. While the political events of the fall of communism in Berlin come thick and fast, silence reigns in the provinces. With “Waiting for Godot”, a young ambitious theater director tries to bring new momentum to a small provincial theater in order to keep up with the political events.
Als wir träumten (2015)
The feature film based on the novel by Clemens Meyer describes the experiences of a Leipzig youth clique in the early post-reunification period, which experiences a time of freedom and anarchy, but also street fights with neo-Nazis and the uncertainty of the future.
Gundermann (2018)
Dresen portrays the rock musician Gerhard Gundermann, who, despite his musical success, always stuck to his work as an excavator driver in the Lusatian lignite mining area. He is known to his friends as an idealist – then it comes to light that he also has a Stasi past.
In Liebe, Eure Hilde (2024)
Andreas Dresen’s latest film portrays the resistance fighter against the Nazi regime Hilde Coppi. The film does not belong thematically in the retrospective with a GDR connection. Nevertheless, it could inspire audiences to reflect on the very different ways in which Hilde and her husband Hans Coppi and their resistance against the Nazi regime were viewed in the two German states after the war.
The film screenings will be followed by discussions with the director. The audience will be able to gain an insight into his working methods and cinematic intentions.
Katharina Schulz, festival director of the Filminitiative Wuerzburg e.V., says about the director’s visit: “Andreas Dresen was already a guest at the International Film Festival in 1999. With every film he has released since then, he has proven that he is one of the most interesting German filmmakers. His themes are universal, the people he lovingly brings to life on the screen are everyday heroes and heroines. The theme of the GDR returns in various facets in Dresen’s films, and here too the focus is not on the historical events themselves, but on the everyday lives of the people. Especially at a time when people are talking more about the differences between the old and new federal states and when right-wing politics are causing social division, it is so important to take a sympathetic look at this everyday life. That can create a connection.”
