Sad Jokes
Once a month, the Goethe-Institut collaborates with the Cinémathèque québécoise to present a significant work of contemporary German cinema: fiction films, documentaries, bold and entertaining productions by established and emerging filmmakers.
Winner of two prizes at the 2024 Munich Film Festival
Joseph and Sonya are close friends who are raising their young son Pino together. Joseph is working on a new film idea and struggling, for several years now, to move on from the breakup with his ex-boyfriend Marc; while Sonya is suffering from a depression that increasingly tears her out of her life. When Sonya checks herself into a clinic to recover, Joseph is forced to juggle parenting, romantic possibilities, and his artistic ambitions.
In his second feature, Writer/Director Fabian Stumm mixes different moods to create a cinematic friction with reality. Sad Jokes is absurdly funny and banal, hopeful and heartbreaking or – like real life – all at once.
Fabian Stumm
Fabian Stumm is a German actor, and director. He studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York and is now based in Berlin. His film work notably includes Cate Shortland's post-war drama Lore (2012), which won an Audience Award at the Locarno Film Festival and Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom (2021), winner of the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. He made his directorial debut with the short film Bruxelles in 2020, in which he starred alongside Anneke Kim Sarnau. In 2022, his second film Daniel won the New Berlin Film Award for Best Medium-Length Feature. His feature debut, Bones and Names, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section in 2023, where it won the Heiner Carow Prize. The film then toured internationally and was nominated for the German Film Award 2024 in the Best Supporting Actress category. His sophomore feature Sad Jokes premiered at Munich Film Festival in 2024 and was awarded the New German Cinema Award for Best Director and the FIPRESCI Prize. It was later selected for TIFF 2024 where it screened in the Discovery section.
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