Directed by:
Oliver HaffnerScreenplay:
Oliver HaffnerCinematography:
Kaspar KavenCast:
Katharina Marie Schubert, Adam Bousdoukos, Canan Kir, Rick Okon, Eva Löbau, Felix Knopp, Franziska Traub, Paul Faßnacht, Luise Heyer, Maik Solbach (more)Plots(1)
Out of the blue Anna, an actress at a provincial community theater, gets fired. Fresh off the stage, she suddenly finds herself at the local job center. On the urging of her theater-mad case worker, she takes on an acting course for seven "hard-to-place clients" — as a compulsory training measure. Overcoming huge resistance, Anna forms the bunch of frustrated lone wolves into a group and starts to rehearse Antigone with them. This gives new impetus to the participants' own private dramas, while Anna too experiences a sort of "comeback" for which she wasn't quite prepared. (Berlinale)
(more)Reviews (2)
A Gift from the Gods offers a sweet story about a group of diverse people who are united by their unemployment situation and, to some extent, the scrapes in their personal lives. Like the play they rehearse together, life is essentially one big drama, alternating tragedy with comedy. Throughout the course of the plot, the various characters, whether with their feet on or off the stage, hit the ground running during their encounters and help each other out of life's predicaments. In the end, this is in some ways a minimalist and unassuming film, but one that is shot in an exceedingly heartfelt and human way.
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An undemanding drama with elements of tragicomedy that will get you with its humanity. An actress who has been forgotten meets other people with the same problem. Society has no interest in them and that leaves them feeling betrayed. Powerful stories about people in the setting of amateur dramatics. I liked the movie and what I particularly liked about it was that finding a job wasn’t the important thing here, but instead finding some inner enthusiasm and drive and learning to get on with others. I watched this as part of "Das Filmfest" and I give it a well-deserved 4*.
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