Back to top

Battle of the Sexes

GER 2023

The 42-year-old actress M. has passed the zenith of her career and, due to advancing age and as a woman, collides with the limits of patriarchal society. A radically humorous critique of the conditions - and their transgression.

The film is in post-production.

Synopsis

M., played by Margarita Breitkreiz, a forty-year-old actress apparently has passed the zenith of her career. Once acting for the most prestigious stages in Germany (Volksbühne Berlin, Berliner Ensemble, Maxim-Gorki-Theater) it turns out difficult for her to get proper engagements. Not only in theatre, but also in film industry, it seems to become more challenging to get parts with advancing age, especially as a woman, moreover as a woman of migrant origin. If she gets an offer for a part, it’s mostly for those serving her Russian origin as a cliché. As a result, she increasingly has to deal with the employment agency's job agents, as well as retraining and other job offers while she starts realizing that the theatre and film business is ruled by inequity and discrimination. Yet even in society, which seems to be strongly influenced by patriarchal structures, she constantly collides with her own limits, or those of the woman in society. Until she decides to break out of the victim role and fight back.

Along the biography of its main actress „BATTLE OF THE SEXES - The End of Patriarchy“  tries to spotlight the issue of gender within the realm of the art, culture and film industry, not offering a clear view or answer but a thesis-like ever shifting arrangement of possible views by quoting differing feminist positions and integrating dialogues with experts of gender studies, cultural studies and feminists.

Credits

Directed by
Sobo Swobodnik
Written by
Margarita Breitkreiz, Sobo Swobodnik
With
Margarita Breitkreiz, Daniel Zillmann, Artemis Chalkidou, Isabel Thierauch, Lars Rudolph, Alexander Scheer, Kathrin Angerer, Inga Busch, Almut Zilcher, Martin Wuttke, Abdoul Kader Traoré, Oliver Nitsche, Lotte Ohm, Anna Görgen, Elisabeth De Meyer, Sascha Hilpert, Hendrik Arnst, Taner Sahintürk, Rosa Lembeck, Lady Bitch Ray, Michaela Dudley, Teresa Bücker
Director of Photography
Sobo Swobodnik
1st Camera Assistant
Ferdinand Klotzky
Editor
Manuel Stettner, Julia Milz
Scenography, Costume Design
Anne Laubner
Make-up Artists
Anne Laubner, Julia Böhm
Sound Operator
Anna Magdalino, Richard Meyer, Weronika Malinowska
Sound Mix
Alexander Heinze, Nele Schinz
Music, Sound Design
Maike Rosa Vogel
1st Assistant Director
Constanze Schüddekopf
Set Manager
Constanze Schüddekopf, Lisa-Marie Lutz
Producer
Frieder Schlaich
Produced by
Filmgalerie 451
Founded by
Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM)