New German comedy explores the Holocaust
When the descendants of perpetrators and victims collide, you get Chris Kraus' film, "Die Blumen von gestern" - which addresses the complexities of the Holocaust using some comic relief.
Forced commonalities
"Die Blumen von gestern" (Yesterday's flowers) tells the story of German Holocaust researcher Totila Blumen (Lars Eidinger) and a young French woman. The two are forced to work together on a research project about Auschwitz. They don't really like each other in the beginning, but a common past brings them closer.
A look back at the Nazi past
Young student Zazie (Adèle Haenel) is doing an internship with Totila Blumen. Despite various hurdles, the German researcher is supposed to organize a conference on Auschwitz - and he also runs into a lot of trouble at first with his new sidekick.
Success in Japan
"Die Blumen von gestern" celebrated a dual world premiere: in Germany, at the international film festival in the small Upper Franconian town of Hof, and at the Tokyo International Film Festival. The movie garnered enthusiastic praise in the Japanese metropolis, with Kraus taking home two awards.
The Holocaust as a comedy
"Die Blumen von gestern" deliberately employs comic relief - a rare medium when addressing the Holocaust in German film. Totila, who tends to blow his top at times, butts head with his boss - shown here with a facial mask following a heated conflict (played by Jan Josef Liefers).
Masterful grotesqueness
With "Die Blumen von gestern," Chris Kraus successfully manages to tackle an extremely complex historical subject, and a particularly difficult one in Germany, in an entertaining way. Hannah Herzsprung is just one of the top-class actors in the film. She plays Totila Blumen's wife.
Between laughter and tears
"Only the first half of the film story is told in a comic way," said director Chris Kraus in an interview with DW. But "Die Blumen von gestern" is actually "a film about pain that makes do with pathos." He said his film should "encourage people to reflect and enter into a dialogue with themselves."