Bloodsuckers
Blutsauger
DIRECTED BY: Julian Radlmaier COUNTRY: Germany YEAR: 2021 SPOKEN LANGUAGE(S): English, German, Russian SUBTITLES: English, German RUNNING TIME: 127 min
SECTION: International Competition 2021
SCREENINGS
SYNOPSIS
August 1928: while workers and farmers search “Das Kapital” for answers to some mysterious vampire bite marks, a self-proclaimed baron enters the life of the charming heiress Miss Flambow-Jansen, as well as her luxury Baltic residence. As it turns out, he is actually a proletarian impostor, forced to escape from the Soviet Union because of a political incident involving no less than Sergei Eisenstein and Stalin himself.
Julian Radlmaier takes his trademark “ironical materialism” even further, with a new mixture of ideology and cinephilia that gives rise to a dialectic fable-cum-formalist-comedy, assuming that the Marxist description of the capitalist as a vampire is far from metaphorical. And while the entire film features historical inaccuracies that highlight the subject’s current relevance, it is the finale, with its abrupt detour into manipulation of reality and xenophobia, which really emphasises how injustice and lies prevailed then as now – only now more than ever. The oppressed continue to aim their class violence in the wrong direction, once again offering their necks to the oppressors’ fangs.” (Berlinale Encounters)
BIOGRAPHY
Julian Radlmaier was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1984, he studied film and history of art in Berlin and Paris before taking a degree in directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). He has worked as an assistant for Werner Schroeter and translated and published a series of film criticism texts by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. His DFFB graduation film, SELBSTKRITIK EINES BÜRGERLICHEN HUNDES, was selected for the 2017 Perspektive Deutsches Kino and went on to screen and win several awards at festivals around the world. His screenplay for BLUTSAUGER has already won the German Screenplay Award and a Berlinale Kompagnon Fellowship.
FILMOGRAPHY
Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa (2013), Ich will mich nicht künstlich aufregen (2014), Ein proletarisches Wintermärchen (2014), Der unsichtbare Film (2017), Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes (2017), Blutsauger (2021)
SCRIPT: Julian Radlmaier PRODUCER: Kirill Krasovskiy CINEMATOGRAPHY: Markus Koob EDITOR: Julian Radlmaier SCORE: Franui CAST: Alexandre Koberidze, Lilith Stangenberg, Alexander Herbst, Corinna Harfouch
WEBSITE: http://blutsauger.grandfilm.de/
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Faktura Film WORLD SALES: Arri Media International (worldsales@arri.de) GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR Grandfilm (verleih@grandfilm.de)