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Acedemy Award Nomination for “The Lives of Others”
The announcement of the Academy Award nominations held good news for fans and supporters of German cinema with the selection of “The Lives of Others” (Das Leben der Anderen) to compete in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Earlier this month, the debut film by director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck competed in the same category for a Golden Globe award but had to concede to the Japan-US co-production, “Letters from Iwo Jima.”. “Lives” has already collected numerous accolades, earning seven Lolas at the German Film Awards in May 2006. Set in 1984, “The Lives of Others” takes place in the Eastern part of a then divided Germany. Five years before its downfall, the East German government is ensuring its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. It tells the story of a party loyalist who - when given a potentially career-boosting job of collecting evidence against a playwright -, finds himself deeply affected by the experience. The immersion in the lives of others – in love, literature, free thinking and speech – transforms the surveillance agent and makes him acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence. “The Lives of Others” joins a relatively long list of German films nominated for foreign-language Oscars, but it would be only the third German film to win an Academy Award. “Nowhere in Africa” won in 2002 and – long before that - “The Tin Drum” took the award in 1979. In four of the last five years German films have managed to get nominated in the foreign language film category, with most of these films set in the Nazi era, including, “The Downfall” (Der Untergang) in 2004 and “Sophie Scholl – The Final Days” in 2005. While “The Lives of Others” takes place in Germany’s more recent past, it shares with these predecessors a sense of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which describes the process of coming to terms with the realities and demons of a country’s past. In its home country, the film seems to have renewed the debate about the manipulations of the East German state security apparatus, the Stasi, and this month’s nominations for the two most prestigious American film awards will help to move this part of Germany’s past into the international limelight. January 24, 2007 Links
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