This year’s Venice Film Festival recipient of the Leoncino d’Oro Agiscuola Award, “Never Look Away,” has released its official trailer and poster just in time for awards season. Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, “Never Look Away” takes on the intergenerational trauma and memory of World War II through the work and life of an artist.
With a provocative story and glowing reviews, the film is slated to be Germany’s official selection for the 91st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Von Donnersmarck is no stranger to the category having been the recipient of the Oscar in 2007 for his film “The Lives Of Others.”
With Von Donnersmarck officially in the mix, this year’s Best Foreign Language Film competition will be a close, exciting category to follow. Early favorites for the category include Palme d’Or Winner Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters,” Lee Chang-dong‘s Cannes Film Festival Winner, “Burning,” Alfonso Cuarón‘s “Roma,” and “Cold War,” Pawel Pawlikowski‘s follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2013 film, “Ida.” According to a report from Variety this past October, over 80 countries have submitted films for selection.
“Never Look Away” opens in New York and Los Angeles November 30 with a national roll-out in February 2019.
Here is the official trailer and full synopsis:
A sweeping romantic historical drama, “Never Look Away” follows thirty years in the life of a great artist – loosely based on Gerhard Richter, one of the 20th century’s most admired visual artists – played by Tom Schilling (“Woman in Gold,” “Generation War”). The film goes from a childhood witnessing Nazi Germany, to post-war East Berlin, where he falls in love with a young woman (Paula Beer, “Frantz,” “The Dark Valley,” “Transit”) whose father is an ex-Nazi murderer in hiding (Sebastian Koch, “The Lives of Others,” “Homeland,” “Blackbook”), to escaping to the West at the time of the Berlin Wall, and ultimately being part of the exciting new movement in contemporary art.
