Fatih Akin's latest film just won Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film of 2017!
The jury at CANNES film festival awarded Kruger the prize for the Best actress in one of the most prestigious film festival's competition in the world!
It is always a great pleasure - for the Sofia Film Festival's team and for the filmmakers in our country, to arrange meetings with magnificent, shocking works of favorite directors in our special month of MARCH, dedicated to cinema. In the 22nd Sofia Film Fest's programme we'll screen Fatih Akin's latest film "IN THE FADE" („Aus dem Nichts”) at the gala premiere after the festival's awards ceremony!
The world premiere of this film was a few months ago in the Cannes official competition. It is no coincidence that Diane Kruger, with a role in the first German-language film in her career, was awarded the Best actress award - Fatih Akin can perform miracles with so many and various actors. The Sofia Film Festival's selection team follows an unofficial tradition - to keep an eye on his films: last year "Goodbye, Berlin" was an intriguing provocation for a wide range of audiences, "The Cut" was a painful return to the wounds of the past, and "Soul Kitchen" is one of the hottest and most entertaining films that gave such warmth to our hearts in the last decade. We must not forget also "Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul" and "The Edge of Heaven" - our festival, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, presented the early films of the talented German filmmaker.
Akin's passion for cinema is great, and our admiration for his ability as a director and narrator is increasing with every subsequent film. In the story that tells "IN THE FADE" Kruger's heroine is a desperate woman who seeks revenge for her dead family and craves for cruel, well deserved punishment for the National Socialist Underground neo-Nazi group.
Fatih Akin tells Variety that for him "IN THE FADE" is an extremely personal film. "In some way, I find myself in the group of "the others" in Germany because of my origins. I have black hair, my parents are from Turkey - I am among the perfect targets for such xenophobic attacks. Several years ago a list appeared on a website called Nuremburg 2.0, where politicians, artists are listed, and my name was also there as a target for the neo-Nazis. That's what provoked me to write the script and make this film - it's my kind of retaliatory blow to the insanity we are witnessing... "
"While the politically charged story will awaken outrage at the hate crimes it realistically portrays, what really brings the horror home is a superb Diane Kruger ... Acting in her native German language, she delivers a career-high performance as the courageous, emotional and unforgiving survivor Katja that should easily put her in the running for an acting prize at Cannes."
"The Hollywood Reporter", Deborah Young
In the program of the 22nd Sofia Film Fest, you will also have the opportunity to see Ruben Ostlund's "The Square" and Andrey Zvyagintsev's "Loveless" - two of the works nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press for the prestigious Golden Globe Award for Foreign Language movie.
WAIT for more SURPRISES in the programme of 22rd Sofia Film Fest - MARCH is the month of the CINEMA!