Film Picks: German Film Festival, Killers Of The Flower Moon, The Pigeon Tunnel
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
German film Sun And Concrete stars (from left) Aaron Maldonado-Morales, Levy Rico Arcos, Rafael Luis Klein-Hebling and Vincent Wiemer.
PHOTO: CONSTANTIN FILM VERLEIH\
German Film Festival x KinoFest 2023
The 26th anniversary of one of Singapore’s longest-running film events will feature its first collaboration with KinoFest, a new regional film festival initiated by German cultural centre Goethe-Institut.
The opening film is Sun And Concrete (2023, M18, 120 minutes, screens Thursday and Oct 25, various timings). Adapted from the autobiography of German comedian and social media star Felix Lobrecht, the crime drama depicts the lives of three teens carrying out a risky plan after a friend falls afoul of a drug dealer.
Director David Wnendt fills the film with the texture of young lives spent in Neukolln, one of Germany’s poorest districts.
Sun And Concrete earned four nominations at the German Film Awards, with Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay among them. After the screening on Oct 25, Wnendt and screenwriter Lobrecht will be present for an in-person Q&A session.
Where: The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road theprojector.sg/germanfilmfest
MRT: Nicoll Highway/Lavender
When: Thursday until Nov 4, various timings
Admission: $15 for standard ticket prices
Info:
Killers Of The Flower Moon (PG13)
206 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
Robert De Niro (left) and Leonardo DiCaprio in the drama Killers Of The Flower Moon.
PHOTO: UIP
This epic tale is almost 3½-hours long, but it is a journey worth taking. Director Martin Scorsese has found a story that combines his two interests – awful men and religious faith.
In Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century, the discovery of oil on their land made the indigenous people of the Osage Nation the wealthiest in the world per capita. However, death by gunshot and poison is rampant in the community.
Local businessman William Hale (Robert De Niro) is respected and liked by the Osage people, so he promises to find the perpetrators. His nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in town, and he and Hale develop a close bond. Burkhart also meets and falls in love with Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a member of the Osage community.
Hale worships power and money. His nephew is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.
A lesser storyteller would have told the story from the point of view of the good guys, the saviours. But Scorsese, in keeping with his style, tells it through the voices of repugnant men.
The film is adapted from the 2017 true-crime bestseller Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI, written by journalist David Grann.
The Pigeon Tunnel (PG13)
92 minutes, premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, 4 stars
David Cornwell, better known as John le Carre, in The Pigeon Tunnel.
PHOTO: APPLE TV+
Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris pulls back the (iron) curtain on the life and career of the late British spy David Cornwell – pen name John le Carre, masterful novelist of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and The Night Manager (1993).
Set against the tension of the Cold War leading into the present day, The Pigeon Tunnel spans six decades as Cornwell in his final interview – he died aged 89 in 2020 – opens up on camera about his complex relationship with his awful conman father.
This Apple Original Films profile documentary is an interrogation into fact and fiction, primarily how Cornwell’s childhood legacy of duplicity conditioned him to entwine the two for an extraordinary dual career as a spy-author.
Cornwell, with his insights into the disillusionment and moral bankruptcy of the espionage apparatus, is a fascinating subject in his own right, spinning yarns to the last.
