Das kleine Fernsehspiel: Film previews and workshop discussion

On the occasion of the start of their summer series Shooting Stars, the ZDF editorial team Das kleine Fernsehspiel invites you to a panel discussion titled The model 'Graduation Film': How universities and television cooperate and presents the feature films Geranien by Tanja Egen (DFFB, ZDF) and Zwischen uns die Nacht by Abini Gold (Filmakademie Ludwigsburg, MFG, ZDF).

4 pm: Film screening of Geranien Tanja Egen, DE 2023, 83'
Actor Nina travels to her home town in Germany’s Ruhr region for her grandmother’s funeral and discovers that her childhood home has remained virtually unchanged. The canary still chirps in the living room, her mother still sits in the kitchen pitting kilos of plums from the garden, and her father still occasionally indulges in a whisky from the “bottom shelf next to the digestif glasses”. But when the date for the funeral is postponed, tensions flare up again between the pragmatic mother and her cosmopolitan daughter who now lives in a large European city and considers the offer of a role in German TV soap Traumschiff (Dreamboat) to be beneath her. And kindly old grandma is no longer there to cushion such conflicts.
Directed with gentle humour, DFFB graduate Tanja Egen’s perceptive feature debut is much more than just a tale of such classic family problems as repressed emotions, things that remain unspoken and a growing sense of distance. Rich in detail, Geranien is an affectionate observation of the complex relationships that exist between daughters and mothers – no matter how old a daughter and a mother may be. Loss, it seems, is a universal feeling.

6 pm: Panel discussion
with filmmakers, producers, university representatives, and editors from both films.

7.30 pm: Film screening of Zwischen uns die Nacht, Abini Gold, DE 2023, 90'
Marie is a young mother who is unable to identify with her role. She and her five-year-old son Lenny live in a camper while a temporary job at a gas station keeps them afloat. She meets Erich, a showman’s assistant, and his co-worker Haro. Together they enter the gaudy world of the fairground, but the friendship among the three of them soon goes sour. When Haro puts her son in danger, Marie’s motherly instincts begin to stir for the first time.