There's something charmingly bizarro about annual by-country groupings of cinema. Movements can certainly emerge based on convergence of time and place—but more often, a geographically thematic festival like this week’s seventh annual German Film Festival is a total grab bag.
The opening night film is the American premiere of Erich Kästner and Little Tuesday, which finds yet another unique lens through which to examine the WWII era. Its opening scene—in which hard-partying citizens of the Weimar Republic guzzle booze and dance with their boobs out—is downright misleading. This is a thoughtful, melancholy film that feels particularly poignant at this moment; while the central focus is the true story of a friendship between children’s author and political radical Erich Kästner and his young fan Hans Löhr, the story’s timespan demonstrates the gradual rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, as well as the stages of denial and disbelief the country’s citizens went through as shit incredibly, disturbingly, continued to get real.