Sleeping Sickness
The book Va voir ailleurs (published at Somme toute by Guillaume Lafleur, our director of programming) puts into perspective several aspects of the cinema of the last twenty years, between politics, aesthetics and new distribution issues. Among the many films discussed, some have rarely been shown in North America. Such is the case of Sleeping Sickness, by German filmmaker Ulrich Köhler.
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director, 2011Berlin International Film Festival
Ebbo and Vera Velten have been living in Africa for a long time. Ebbo has to give up his life in Africa or he loses the women he loves. But he has become a stranger to Europe. His fear of returning increases from day to day. Years later, Alex Nzila, a young French doctor of Congolese origin, travels to Cameroon to evaluate a development project. But instead of finding new prospects, he encounters a destructive, lost man: like a phantom, Ebbo slips away from his evaluator.
Ulrich Köhler
Ulrich Köhler is a German filmmaker. He directed his first short films during his studies, which ended in 1998. Among his influences, he acknowledges Michelangelo Antonioni, Hong Sang-soo, and Bruno Dumont. His first feature film, Bungalow, was featured in the Panorama section of the 2002 Berlinale, while his second film, Windows on Monday, screened at the Forum of Young Directors. In 2011, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale for his film Sleeping Sickness (Die Schlafkrankheit). Köhler is generally considered to belong to the Berlin School, a term used for a new movement in German films that has emerged in the early 21st century.