Cinema Akil to screen four German films as part of summer series

The arthouse cinema is concluding its Traveller film series with classic and contemporary German films

'Kings of the Road' will screen at Cinema Akil from Friday, September 4 to Thursday, September 10. Cinema Akil 

The final chapter of Cinema Akil’s Traveller series is due to start this weekend, visually whisking audiences away to Germany.

As part of the series, which kicked off earlier this summer, Cinema Akil has already screened a selection of French and Italian classics, including Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. Dubai's only independent cinema is now set to conclude the series by screening four German classic and contemporary favourites.

Next Stop: Germany, a programme presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Gulf-Region, will begin on Friday, September 4, with the Wim Wenders classic Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit).

Here's a closer look at what films feature in the line-up ...

‘Kings of the Road’ (1976)

Winner of the Fipresci Prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders's drama tells the story of a friendship between two men: Bruno, aka the "King of the Road" (Rudiger Vogler), who repairs film projectors and travels along the inner-German border in his truck, and psychologist Robert, aka "Kamikaze" (Hanns Zischler), who is fleeing his past.

Wenders began the film without a script. Instead, the film was inspired by a route he had scouted beforehand, passing through little towns that still contained movie theatres in an era of cinematic mass extinction.

The old moving van with film projectors in the back is seen as a metaphor of the history of film. This story also explores themes such as the absence of women, loneliness and post-war Germany, with Robert telling Bruna at one point: “The Yankees have colonised our subconscious.”

Kings of the Road will screen at Cinema Akil from Friday, September 4 to Thursday, September 10.

‘Goodbye Berlin’ (2016)

Fatih Akin's comedy-drama Goodbye Berlin is based on the best-selling cult novel Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf.

The film revolves around the relationship between two classmates from disparate worlds. Maik (Tristan Gobel) is from a wealthy, albeit dysfunctional, family, and is virtually invisible to his peers. In contrast, Tschick (Anand Batbileg) is an impoverished migrant kid living in dire conditions in Berlin-Marzahn and often causes trouble. The boys do have one thing in common: they're both outsiders. With his mother in rehab and his father away on a "business trip", Maik's plans to spend the summer alone at home change when Tschick appears with a "borrowed" car and a plan: they'll drive to Wallachia and visit Tschick's grandfather.

Without a map or a clue where they are going, the unlikely friends set out on a wild adventure through eastern Germany to experience the trip of a lifetime, learning about themselves and the power of friendship along the way.

Goodbye Berlin (Tschick) will screen at Cinema Akil from Friday, September 11 to Thursday, September 17.

‘Measuring the World’ (2012)

Detlev Buck’s adaption of Daniel Kehlmann's best-selling novel of the same name takes viewers around the world with 19th-century German scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss.

The film was nominated for two German Film Awards in 2013, and won the Best Costume Design and Best Make-up Design awards at the 2013 Austrian Film Awards. The film follows the two scientists' adventures as they seek to “discover” worlds and cultures unknown to them. Fact and fiction are mixed, often to humorous effect, to show the findings of two very different men who nevertheless sought the same answers.

Measuring the World (Die Vermessung der Welt) will screen at Cinema Akil from Friday, September 18, to Thursday, September 24.

‘Ticket of No Return’ (1979)

The last film of the Traveller series is the 1979 experimental drama Ticket of No Return (Bildnis einer Trinkerin) by Ulrike Ottinger, who won the Berlinale Camara award at the 70th Berlin Film Festival for the film.

Ticket of No Return (1979)
Dir. Ulrike Ottinger pic.twitter.com/qsMCls6Nqg

— سروش (@blissfulmalady) May 3, 2020

Ticket of No Return tells the story of a woman who, on one sunny winter's day, decides to purchase a one-way ticket to Berlin-Tegel. The city, in which she is a complete stranger, seems like just the place to help her forget her past and find her own destiny.

Ticket of No Return (Bildnis einer Trinkerin) will be showing at Cinema Akil from Friday, September 25 to Thursday, October 1.