The Feminist Cinema of Margarethe Von Trotta

Saturday, March 3-----The Miami International Film Festival has traditionally been a supportive environment for female directors. This year, the Festival is showcasing more than 40 films from women directors from all over the world, including several highly anticipated films from acknowledged film veterans. One such pioneer is the German director Margarethe von Trotta, whose newest film I AM THE OTHER WOMAN (Ich Bin Die Andere) screens this evening as a Gusman Premiere at the Festival's premiere venue, the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami.

Margarethe von Trotta is one of the icons of international feminist cinema. She has had a 40-year long career as both an acclaimed actress and a highly respected director. She first attracted international attention with starring roles in the films of such iconic German directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff (whom she eventually married, writing many of his subsequent films, as well as co-directing the acclaimed THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM in 1975). Von Trotta became the New German Cinema’s most prominent and successful female filmmaker with such landmark films as THE SECOND AWAKENING OF CHRISTA KLAGES (1977), MARIANNE AND JULIANE (1981, winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion), ROSA LUXEMBOURG (1986, winner of the German Best Film Oscar), THE PROMISE (1995, a German Best Director Oscar) and the Holocaust drama ROSENSTRASSE (2003, Italian Oscar winner as Best Director). Von Trotta is a living legend whose films feature strong female protagonists, usually set against an important political background, with the effect of the political on the personal (and vice versa) her great cinematic theme.[img_assist|nid=3209|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=107|height=150]

In I AM OTHER WOMAN, von Trotta's political touch is considerably lighter, as she explores the endless struggle between men and women (which, come to think of it, is a rather political subject after all). The veteran directors brings her considerable gifts to this story of a young engineer’s one-night stand with a mysterious woman, which sends him down an Alice In Wonderland-like rabbit hole of erotic obsession and domestic dysfunction. The film stars German film star August Diehl (the priest in Volker Schlondorff’s THE NINTH DAY), Katja Diemann (Venice Film Festival Best Actress for ROSENSTRASSE) and Oscar nominee Armin Muehller-Stahl (SHINE). The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and has since become a European arthouse hit.

Sandy Mandelberger, Miami Online Dailies Editor