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The Drifter

GER 2010, 97 min

John Cassavetes A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE in the 21st Century.

Synopsis

Greta, 40, an architect, mother of a 12-year-old son, separated from her husband, recently unemployed. She starts working in a call center but is soon dismissed once again. She does everything in her power to keep hanging on in there, starts drinking and drifts through the city, torn between the pressure to confirm and the spirit of contradiction.

THE DRIFTER is the first part of Tatjana Turanskyj's “Women and Work” trilogy.

Streaming-Info

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Language: German, Subtitles: English

Press reviews

Eine flexible Frau (The Drifter) represents a remarkable sign of life in contemporary German cinema. Tatjana Turanskyj’s feature debut is an Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl, 1966) for the globalisation era. It trails Greta M. (played by Mira Partecke), an unemployed architect on the verge of a nervous breakdown, through a series of absurd encounters in the capital. She divides her time between job centres and call centres, outmoded cafés and hypermodern townhouse developments. Earnest in her wish to work again, she is stymied by the hypocrisies and vocabularies of the new economy. She is schooled in mellifluous platitudes (“pragmatic utopian architecture”) and not allowed to be “unemployed”, but rather “looking for a new challenge”. (...) As an agent for the film’s overall concerns, Greta pursues a psychogeography of the new Berlin. This eludes her, if not us: the city is seen, literally and figuratively, through tinted lenses. Greta’s oversized shades reflect the capital’s new class of attractive urban professionals and fragmented prospects of gated townhouse communities. Through these semi-privatised streets (“surveilled, but ecologically correct!”) and the clans that dwell in them, Turanskyj lays bare the traditional (West German) gender dynamics in action behind the hip Prenzlauer Berg idyll and entertains the possibility of material existence and connectivity in an increasingly conformist society. – Mattias Frey, Senses of Cinema

Awards and Festivals

- Berlinale - Forum 2010
- Fimfestival de Cannes 2010 - L'ACID (L'Association du cinéma indépendant pour sa diffusion)
- Crossing Europe Linz - Wettbewerb 2010
- Internationales FrauenFilmFestival Köln Dortmund - Wettbewerb 2010
- Achtung Berlin, Berlin - Wettbewerb 2010
- Filmkunstfestival Schwerin 2010
- Neisse-Filmfestival, Zittau - Wettbewerb 2010
- Fünf-Seen-Film-Festival, Starnberg - Wettbewerb 2010
- Frauenfilmtage Wien 2010
- 39. Festival du nouveau cinema, Montreal 2010
- Elles tournent, Frauenfilmfestival Brüssel 2010
- Oldenburg International Filmfestival / Wettbewerb 2010
- 34th Göteborg International Film Festival 2011
- 23. Sguardi Altrove Film Festival, Mailand 2011 - Bester Spielfilm
- Kino Arsenal des Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst - Werkschau Tatjana Turanskyj 2021

Credits

Director and Screenplay
Tatjana Turanskyj
With
Mira Partecke, Katharina Bellena, Laura Tonke, Andina Weiler, Bastian Trost, Sven Seeger, Torsten Haase, Fabio Pink, Ilia Papatheodorou, Michaela Benn, Thorsten Heidel, Ninoschka Schlothauer, Franziska Dick, Gisela Gard, Mattis Hausig, Birgit Acar, Anna Schmidt, Angelika Sautter, Anna Eger, Saskia Draxler, Chunchun Qian, Aizhen Xu, Weihua Wang, Roman Weiler, Horst Markgraf, Sean Patten, Timur Isik, Dorothea Moritz
Collaboration
Claudia Zweifel
Director of Photography
Jenny Barth
Editor
Ricarda Zinke
Music
Niels Lorenz
Make-up Artist
Patricia Makosch, Verena Lindauer
Costume Design
Ingken Benesch, Tanja Jesek, Torsten Haase
Sound
Matthias Gauerke
Sound Design
Jochen Jezussek
Sound Mixing
Detlef A. Schitto - Studio 1141
Production Manager
Corinna Volkmann
Producers
Tatjana Turanskyj, Jan Ahlrichs
Produced by 
turanskyj & ahlrichs
Founded by 
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW
German Premiere
18.02.2010, Berlin, IFF – Internationales Forum des Jungen Films
German Theatrical Release
06.01.2011

DVD-Details

Extras
Original Mood Board, Extracts from Screenplay, Trailer
Language
German
Subtitles
English
Country Code
Code-free
System
PAL / Color
Length
97 min
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
DD 2.0
Set Content
Softbox (Set Content: 1)
Release Date
23.09.2011
Rating
From 12 Years

Distribution Details

Screening Format
Blu-ray Disc
Aspect Ratio
1:1,85
Language
German
Subtitles
English
Promotion Material
A1 Poster, Trailer
License Area
Germany, Austria, Swiss
Rating
From 12 Years