The Promise
German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta was a major figure in the New German Cinema of the 1960s-70s. She went on to embody the emancipatory Frauenfilm movement, characterized by female directors portraying strong female characters. An approach she has pursued with coherence and inspiration right up to the present day, with an ever-renewed filmography tackling the intimacy to better speak of politics, through fighting women plunged into the heart of history. In collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Montréal, we present ten of her films, including her latest, Ingeborg Bachmann.
In 1961, shortly after the Berlin Wall was built, two students, Sophie and Konrad, try to cross to the West via the sewers, but they get separated and only Sophie makes it through. They manage to reunite in 1968 in Prague and Sophie becomes pregnant, but fate separates them once again. Konrad promises Sophie he'll join her, but it won't be easy.
Margarethe von Trotta
Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942, before moving to Düsseldorf with her mother at the end of the war. In the early 1960s, she moved to Paris, where she discovered the films of Ingmar Bergman and the French New Wave, and became involved in film collectives and the production of short films. She then became an actress, notably in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff. With Schlöndorff, she co-directed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, before pursuing her career as a solo filmmaker. She then signed The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, in which she affirmed themes that would continue to appear throughout her work, in particular those of solidarity between women, political commitment and the emergence of violence.
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