We’re sounding like a broken record. What did we know about “A Woman in Berlin” before going in at TIFF? Not a hell of a whole lot, other than that it was a German film and we felt like branching out and taking in something different for a change of pace (plus we’ve been digging a lot of Kraut-made WWII cinema of late). We will admit there was one draw, the music of Zbigniew Preisner, the composing maestro behind the haunting scores to many, many Krzysztof Kieślowski films, one of our all-time favorite directors. But other than that, we didn’t really know a thing.
Ok, we’re kind too tired to write much here. But “A Woman In Berlin,” was our last TIFF film today, so the festival is officially over now. Based on a banned, anonymous and shocking account of women who were mass-raped by the Russians who overtook Berlin in the spring of 1945, the controversial German film humanized these female Nazi supporters (and their Russian perpetrators). It was a bleak and harrowing conclusion to TIFF, but a super-powerful and piercing one. We’ll get into this one a little bit more tomorrow, but suffice to say: Keep an eye on this one. The mindful director Max Färberböck (“Aimée & Jaguar”) hasn’t screened it in Germany yet and apparently, he’s incredibly nervous to do so. And don’t be surprised if you hear about this film again come Foreign Oscar award nomination time. More later. [A]
