Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 26, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Short synopsis:
Life: only Trudi knows that her husband Rudi is seriously ill. And it is up to her whether she wants to tell him or not. Trudi decides to keep the illness secret and persuades Rudi to visit their children and grandchildren in Berlin once more. Once there, however, the two have to realise that their children are far too busy with their own lives to take care of their parents.
The two then decide to travel to a hotel on the Baltic Sea. There, Trudi suddenly dies – Rudi is completely thrown off course and does not know how to go on. When he also learns from his daughter’s friend that Trudi apparently sacrificed the life she wanted to live out of love for him, he sees his deceased wife with new eyes.
He decides to make up for the life she missed…
100526_Kirschblüten2.jpg
CHERRY BLOSSOMS – HANAMI is a deeply human and tragicomic love story by successful director Doris Dörrie about two people in their mid-sixties, played by Elmar Wepper (THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE) and Hannelore Elsner (GO FOR ZUCKER), who are separated by death and only thereby truly find one another. Honoured with three German Film Awards and two Bavarian Film Awards, the film thrilled more than one million cinema-goers, making it one of the year’s most successful German films.
$$$$
“Desert Flower” is one of the year’s most successful films and received the Bavarian Film Award for Best Film.
Short synopsis:
Mysterious, proud, beautiful: when young Somali woman Waris Dirie (Liya Kebede) is discovered in a London fast-food restaurant by star photographer Terry Donaldson (Timothy Spall), the international fashion world enthusiastically celebrates the birth of a new top model. But behind the glamorous façade lies a
deeply moving fate.
Born in the African desert, Waris grows up in a constant struggle for daily survival. When she is to be forced into marriage at the age of 13, she flees to escape her father’s will. She wanders through the desert for days until she finally reaches the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Her mother’s family takes her in and finds her a position as a maid at the Somali embassy in London – where she is not allowed to leave the house for years. When she faces a return to Somalia a few years later, Waris flees again. She goes underground in the metropolis, survives on casual jobs and finds a friend and confidante in lively saleswoman and free spirit Marilyn (Sally Hawkins).
But then Donaldson discovers her … and a fairy tale comes true: designers compete for her, and the jet set and press love the nomad girl who found her way from desert dust to the world’s most famous catwalks.
Waris Dirie becomes one of the world’s best-paid models. Yet despite all her success, the shadows of the past repeatedly catch up with Waris, and the secret of her childhood burdens her. At the height of her career, she talks in an interview about the cruel tradition of female genital mutilation, of which she herself was a victim as a small child. Publication triggers a wave of sympathy and protest, and Waris decides to dedicate her life to fighting this ritual …
Further Links:
- Go to the reader survey