Kjersti Paulsen was named the winner of the Semiramis Award for excellence in casting for her work on “The Innocents,” directed by Norway’s Eskil Vogt, at a ceremony Saturday at Torino Film Festival.
The psychological thriller about four kids who suddenly discover they have hidden powers celebrated its world premiere at Cannes, with Variety’s Jessica Kiang praising its “exceptional child performers.”
“The producer, director and I agreed on the importance of finding the right children and gave it the highest priority. All other characters had to wait,” said Paulsen before her win.
“My job is to create an environment where the children feel secure and can join in the role-play we bring them into. Then I need to determine the children’s capacity for empathy, their ability to listen to co-players, imagination and self-confidence.”
“The Innocents”
The award – established in 2016 by the International Casting Directors Network (Icdn) – is...
The psychological thriller about four kids who suddenly discover they have hidden powers celebrated its world premiere at Cannes, with Variety’s Jessica Kiang praising its “exceptional child performers.”
“The producer, director and I agreed on the importance of finding the right children and gave it the highest priority. All other characters had to wait,” said Paulsen before her win.
“My job is to create an environment where the children feel secure and can join in the role-play we bring them into. Then I need to determine the children’s capacity for empathy, their ability to listen to co-players, imagination and self-confidence.”
“The Innocents”
The award – established in 2016 by the International Casting Directors Network (Icdn) – is...
- 11/26/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Downfall
BERLIN -- One of the best war movies ever made, Downfall is a powerful and artistically masterful re-creation of the last days of the Third Reich. A film that will set new standards in the art of committing history to celluloid, it is sure to spark strong word-of-mouth and generate ticket sales on the art house circuit -- and could pick up major awards.
Downfall tells not only the historically accurate tale of the last days of Hitler and his henchmen, which they spent in a bunker under the streets of Berlin, but also, in state-of-the-art battle sequences, of the civilians and soldiers fighting and dying on the savaged streets above as the Soviet Army turned the city into a pile of rubble.
The combined power of the chamber play unraveling in the bunker and the horrible epic slaughter in the streets above (which, of course, Hitler could have stopped at any time by surrendering) elevates the film from a historical re-enactment to a full-fledged war movie, on par with Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot in every regard. With its horrific and realistic depiction of the human beings who caused all this, Downfall could be the most important movie ever made about World War II.
The script, written masterfully by producer Bernd Eichinger (The Name of the Rose, The House of the Spirits), closely follows the definitive book Inside Hitler's Bunker, by renowned historian Joachim Fest, as well as on the reminiscences of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, whose story was turned into an excellent interview/documentary under the title Blind Spot (two sections of the interview frame the dramatized action of Downfall). Although the young Junge acts as a kind of main character, Eichinger has resisted the temptation to invent any nonhistoric characters for the viewer to sympathize with. What we get in Downfall is as close to what really happened as we will ever see on celluloid.
The actors are on the money, which makes Oliver Hirschbiegel's direction look nothing less than brilliant. And the same goes for An Dorthe Braker's inspired casting. Indeed, a major difference between this film and earlier depictions of Hitler is that these actors are all believably German, neither just blond and blue-eyed stereotypes nor craven caricatures of evil. It is easy to imagine any of them as the guy next door -- or even as yourself, given the circumstances. This is Hirschbiegel's artistic triumph: He makes sure we see that the "face of evil" didn't come from outer space but from among us.
Juliane Koehler plays Eva Braun with a weird, demented carelessness -- she is almost ecstatically happy to die with her Adolf (whom she marries at the very end), but at the same time she seems stupidly to have no real comprehension of the destruction going on around her. She is Marie Antoinette in a dirndl. When Magda Goebbels, played dignified and murderous by Corinna Harfouch, poisons her own children so they won't have to face the disappointment of growing up in a world without Nazism, you wonder whether the Third Reich was state or religion.
But the sensation of the film is Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) in a stunning performance as Hitler. Physically, Ganz slumps, shrinks and scowls -- Hitler's health was failing at this point, and Ganz captures the sunken little man perfectly. Most importantly, not once does he slip into a caricature of evil. Ganz shows you a human being. When he refuses to leave Berlin and save himself, you can see that in his mind he is performing an act of heroism.
The perverted humanity of Hitler and his henchmen may be a problem for some reviewers and community leaders, who may fear that neo-Nazis will watch the movie and be moved, not horrified, by Hitler's last days. That's a small risk, though, for a film that succeeds on all levels in saying so much not only about the horrors of the 20th century, but about human nature as well.
Downfall (Der Untergang)
World Sales: EOS Distribution
Production company: Constantin Film
Co-Producers NDR, WDR, Degeto Film, ORF and EOS Production and RAI Cinema
CREDITS
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Writer: Bernd Eichinger, based on the book Inside Hitler's Bunker by Joachim Fest and "Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary" by Traudl Junge and Melissa Mueller
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Production Executive: Christine Rothe
Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann
Production designer: Bernd Lepel
Music: Stephan Zacharias
Casting: An Dorthe Braker
Costume designer: Claudia Bobsin
Editor: Hans Funck
Special effects: Die Nefzers
Sound Design: Stefan Busch
Sound: Roland Winke
Sound mixing: Michael Kranz
Line producer: Silvia Tollmann
Cast:
Adolf Hitler: Bruno Ganz
Traudl Junge: Alexandra Maria Lara
Magda Goebbels: Corinna Harfouch
Joseph Goebbels: Ulrich Matthes
Eva Braun: Juliane Kohler
Albert Speer: Heino Ferch
Prof. Schenck: Christian Berkel
Prof. Dr. Werner Haase: Matthias Habich
Hermann Fegelein: Thomas Kretschmann
Helmuth Weidling: Michael Mendl
Wilhelm Mohnke: Andre Hennicke
Heinrich Himmler Ulrich Noethen
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 150 minutes...
Downfall tells not only the historically accurate tale of the last days of Hitler and his henchmen, which they spent in a bunker under the streets of Berlin, but also, in state-of-the-art battle sequences, of the civilians and soldiers fighting and dying on the savaged streets above as the Soviet Army turned the city into a pile of rubble.
The combined power of the chamber play unraveling in the bunker and the horrible epic slaughter in the streets above (which, of course, Hitler could have stopped at any time by surrendering) elevates the film from a historical re-enactment to a full-fledged war movie, on par with Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot in every regard. With its horrific and realistic depiction of the human beings who caused all this, Downfall could be the most important movie ever made about World War II.
The script, written masterfully by producer Bernd Eichinger (The Name of the Rose, The House of the Spirits), closely follows the definitive book Inside Hitler's Bunker, by renowned historian Joachim Fest, as well as on the reminiscences of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, whose story was turned into an excellent interview/documentary under the title Blind Spot (two sections of the interview frame the dramatized action of Downfall). Although the young Junge acts as a kind of main character, Eichinger has resisted the temptation to invent any nonhistoric characters for the viewer to sympathize with. What we get in Downfall is as close to what really happened as we will ever see on celluloid.
The actors are on the money, which makes Oliver Hirschbiegel's direction look nothing less than brilliant. And the same goes for An Dorthe Braker's inspired casting. Indeed, a major difference between this film and earlier depictions of Hitler is that these actors are all believably German, neither just blond and blue-eyed stereotypes nor craven caricatures of evil. It is easy to imagine any of them as the guy next door -- or even as yourself, given the circumstances. This is Hirschbiegel's artistic triumph: He makes sure we see that the "face of evil" didn't come from outer space but from among us.
Juliane Koehler plays Eva Braun with a weird, demented carelessness -- she is almost ecstatically happy to die with her Adolf (whom she marries at the very end), but at the same time she seems stupidly to have no real comprehension of the destruction going on around her. She is Marie Antoinette in a dirndl. When Magda Goebbels, played dignified and murderous by Corinna Harfouch, poisons her own children so they won't have to face the disappointment of growing up in a world without Nazism, you wonder whether the Third Reich was state or religion.
But the sensation of the film is Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) in a stunning performance as Hitler. Physically, Ganz slumps, shrinks and scowls -- Hitler's health was failing at this point, and Ganz captures the sunken little man perfectly. Most importantly, not once does he slip into a caricature of evil. Ganz shows you a human being. When he refuses to leave Berlin and save himself, you can see that in his mind he is performing an act of heroism.
The perverted humanity of Hitler and his henchmen may be a problem for some reviewers and community leaders, who may fear that neo-Nazis will watch the movie and be moved, not horrified, by Hitler's last days. That's a small risk, though, for a film that succeeds on all levels in saying so much not only about the horrors of the 20th century, but about human nature as well.
Downfall (Der Untergang)
World Sales: EOS Distribution
Production company: Constantin Film
Co-Producers NDR, WDR, Degeto Film, ORF and EOS Production and RAI Cinema
CREDITS
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Writer: Bernd Eichinger, based on the book Inside Hitler's Bunker by Joachim Fest and "Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary" by Traudl Junge and Melissa Mueller
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Production Executive: Christine Rothe
Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann
Production designer: Bernd Lepel
Music: Stephan Zacharias
Casting: An Dorthe Braker
Costume designer: Claudia Bobsin
Editor: Hans Funck
Special effects: Die Nefzers
Sound Design: Stefan Busch
Sound: Roland Winke
Sound mixing: Michael Kranz
Line producer: Silvia Tollmann
Cast:
Adolf Hitler: Bruno Ganz
Traudl Junge: Alexandra Maria Lara
Magda Goebbels: Corinna Harfouch
Joseph Goebbels: Ulrich Matthes
Eva Braun: Juliane Kohler
Albert Speer: Heino Ferch
Prof. Schenck: Christian Berkel
Prof. Dr. Werner Haase: Matthias Habich
Hermann Fegelein: Thomas Kretschmann
Helmuth Weidling: Michael Mendl
Wilhelm Mohnke: Andre Hennicke
Heinrich Himmler Ulrich Noethen
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 150 minutes...
- 10/5/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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