Rating: NNNN
NO PLACE TO GO (Oskar Roehler, 2000) is the story of West German leftist writer Hanna Flanders, who’d made a career writing apologies for East Germany’s “worker’s paradise” only to discover that her publisher’s dumped her and the East Berliners think she’s a fool. Strikingly photographed in black-and-white (credit cinematographer Hagen Bogdanksi), No Place To Go turns the modernist terrain of Berlin into a spiritual landscape unimagined even by more lyrical filmmaker Wim Wenders. The film is anchored both by Hennelore Elsner’s performance as Flanders, never flinching during her character’s downward spiral, and writer-director Roehler’s way of viewing his heroine with a mixture of admiration and horror — the character is based on his mother. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize as best film at the Miami Film Festival. NNNN (November 15, Goethe Institut)
