October 2003 - Nr. 10
German film wins
the "Golden Shell"
TWIG - A German film has struck gold at the San Sebastián film festival, becoming the first German film ever to win Spain’s highest cinematic honor, the Golden Shell. "Schussangst" ("Gun Shy"), directed by Georgian-born director Dito Tsintsadze, is based on the book of the same name by Dirk Kurbjuweit.
The honor is not the first for Tsintsadze, whose film repertoire includes "On the Verge," awarded the Silver Leopard at the Locarno film festival (1993), and "Lost Killers," which earned an honorable mention at Cannes (2000). The director describes "Schussangst" as a "poetic thriller, the story of a metamorphosis."
Walking a fine line between the surreal and the darkly-comic, it tells the story of a Lukas, a troubled young man who vehemently opposes joining the German army.
After deciding against army duty, which is one of two options for recently-graduated young men in Germany, Lukas begins his year of civil service delivering meals-on-wheels for elderly and sick people in Hamburg. A pacifist, he spends his evenings alone rowing down a river. He soon falls in love with Isabella, a strangely intriguing young woman whose melancholy matches his own. But following a theft at a boat house, Lukas’s world is overturned when he becomes the subject of a police investigation. As Isabella gradually begins to distance herself from him, and pressure mounts to clear himself of the crime, Lukas turns to violence.
"Schussangst" was not a favorite to win at the festival and had been discounted by many critics before receiving the award. Tsintsadze defended his low-budget work. "Life is contradictory, and cinema should be a mirror of this," he said.
The San Sebastián film festival is the largest cinematic event in Spain and ranks among the most important film festivals in Europe.
