A masterclass with award-winning director Angela Schanelec, one of the most prominent filmmakers of contemporary German cinema.

Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale in 2019, filmmaker Angela Schanelec is one of the founders of the contemporary German cinema that came to be known as the Berlin School, among whose members are Christian Petzold and Thomas Arslan. But Schanelec is also a unique and exceptional filmmaker who evades even this rigid identification. Schanelec usually portrays European family relationships with delicate intimacy, while also being critically aware of the surrounding social and economic conditions. Her daring films have a rhythm and tone that express the ineffable aspect of the human psyche. Her plots are shattered and cast aside, and instead she composes her elliptical films from those moments that occur between the dramatic events. Like her radically austere approach to cinema overall, the opaque acting performances in her films draw from theatrical alienation traditions and the Bressonian opposition to naturalism. This makes her films mysterious, enigmatic and challenging, and yet they are exciting and manage to reveal the tumultuous metaphysical connections beneath serene everyday experiences.

Schanelec studied drama and started out as a theater actress before studying at the Academy of Film and Television in Berlin. She developed her experimental and radical cinematic form in her final film, “I Stayed in Berlin All Summer”. Her feature film, “Places in Cities” (1998) screened in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. Her subsequent films “Marseille” (2004), “Afternoon” (2007), and “Orly” (2011) were also acclaimed at international festivals and established her status as a revered filmmaker. Her film “I Was at Home, But…” (2019) won Silver Bear for Best Directing at the Berlinale.