Elyas M’Barek

The Collini Case

by
Collini and lawyer Leinen

The Collini Case is a courtroom drama adapted from a book written by Ferdinand von Schirach, a laywer-turned-novelist in the John Grisham mould, though being German and having been born in 1964, von Schirach has a different set of concerns. He would have been about 13 when the murder of industrialist and former Nazi SS man Hanns Martin Schlayer happened in 1977, at the hands of the Red Army Faction (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang). He doesn’t directly reference that killing but it informs his book and this film, which is set in the here and now (ish) but is concerned with old atrocities and a peculiarity of the German penal code which allowed … Read more

What We Wanted

by
Niklas and Alice with their neighbour's daughter

What We Wanted (Was Wir Wollten in the original German) is the story of a late-30s Austrian couple who signed up to be together, have kids, the whole kit and caboodle, trying to renegotiate their relationship after their fourth round of failed IVF treatment. We meet them just as they’re getting the bad news in the IVF clinic. But their other problem, and what this exquisitely crafted film is about, is that they have never really had “the conversation”, never really hashed out, possibly in horrible recriminatory detail, why they can’t have kids, who’s to “blame” and where they go from here – what they wanted, what they want now and what they … Read more