Filmfest Hamburg opens its “Gateway to a thousand worlds” for the 16th time on 25th September 2008 with the German premiere of the film “North Face” by director and scriptwriter Philipp Stölzl, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and got the audience caught to the gripping drama.

Albert Wiederspiel: “I couldn’t allow myself and the Hamburg audience to pass this by: a mountain drama as the opening film in the lowlands of Hamburg. But I am absolutely positive that the people from Hamburg are cosmopolitan enough to be just as enthralled by “North Face” as the Ticino audience was in Locarno. After all, cinema is about emotional heights, not just geographical ones…”

The film is based on true occurrences centring on the two young mountaineers, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), climbing aces from Berchtesgaden. The story is set in Germany in 1936, just before the start of the Olympic Games, a time when the Nazi regime was busily seeking new idols. In their battle for an Olympic medal, Toni and Andi set out to be the first to climb the notorious Eiger north face. When the Berliner Zeitung newspaper editor Arau (Ulrich Tukur) discovers that his intern Luise (Johanna Wokalek) is a school day friend of Toni’s and Andi’s, he senses a sensational propagandist story. He has her persuade the two to solve “the last problem in the Alps”. But an Austrian team, too, intends to overcome the murderous north face. As the two rival rope teams begin their ascent, the world holds its breath. Initially both teams make a steady advance, but then the natural force of the Eiger looms up once more. And while the four mountaineers risk all, Luise must make a choice – between the Third Reich propaganda machine and her feelings for Toni. A dramatic race for life and death begins…

“North Face” is the second feature film by Philipp Stölz, following the tragicomedy “Baby”, which premiered in San Sebastian in 2001. He has enjoyed success in the fields of advertising and music videos and in recent years he has also made a name for himself as a sought-after opera director. In reply to the question of how he had come by this cinematic material, he said: “I was immediately taken in by the crazy story built around Toni Kurz. On the one hand there is this intense drama involving four people in an existentialist, brutal fight for survival on the side of a mountain. On the other hand it is a chronicle of the ideological exploitation of mountaineering by the Nazis. It is this mixture in particular that makes it such gripping cinematic material, in my opinion.”

The opening of Filmfest Hamburg with the German premiere of “North Face” will take place on 25th September 2008 at 8pm in the cinema CinemaxX Dammtor.

Interview requests should be made through LimeLight PR, Mrs Petra Schwuchow under petra.schwuchow@limelight-pr.de or by telephone under 030 - 263 969 813. Please find more information on this film at the press server under www.majestic.medianetworx.de.

The distributor Majestic Filmverleih will release “North Face” in the German cinemas on 23rd October 2008.