Irish Film Institute -WEST

WEST

Director: CHRISTIAN SCHWOCHOW

104 minutes, Germany, 2013, Colour, Subtitled, D-Cinema


This film was released on Friday 12th June 2015 and is no longer screening. 

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Based on the novel by Julia Franck, West depicts a single mother trying to make a life in West Germany in the 1970s after escaping from the East. Nelly (Jordis Triebel) finds herself within the paranoia-inducing confines of a refugee centre with her son Alexej (Tristan Gobel). She is questioned relentlessly by Allied secret services, where it is teasingly revealed that Alexej’s father, who Nelly believed was killed in a fatal car crash some years previously, is suspected of still being alive. As Nelly deals with that suggestion and strives to get the official approval she needs to get on with building her new life, she begins to behave more erratically.

 Jordis Triebel gives an excellent performance at the centre of this absorbing drama which sees Christian Schwochow allying himself with an emerging generation of significant German filmmakers who are keen to investigate the country’s recent, difficult history.(Notes by Michael Hayden)

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