Completed - GERMAN - Drama - 80 minutes
Phoebe Phaedon, climatologist, Institute of Cybernetics, shut down threatens. Research promises? Contrary interests, precarious excellence, future prospect light: everything depends on a successful evaluation. Strategy consulting vs. student movement in virtual reality. The circumstances are dancing
Year of production : 2019 Director(s) : Max LINZ Writer(s) : Nicolas VON PASSAVANT Cast : Sarah RALFS, Bernd MOSS, Sophie ROIS, Philipp HAUß Producer(s) : Maximilian HASLBERGER (AMERIKAFILM GMBH)
The Institute for Cybernetics and Simulation Research is threatened with closure – the starting point for this satire about how the university system is to be transformed into a turbo-capitalist research machine. Phoebe Phaidon, a highly qualified, up-and-coming young academic, accepts yet another temporary teaching contract. With her progressive ideals on climate research still more or less intact, she acts as a link to the frustrated, yet combat-ready students who have occupied the library. On the other side of the battle lines are the established faculty, whose will to survive in the cesspool of third-party funding acquisition has ground them down into vain cynics for whom no ridiculous concession to evaluation madness is too grotesque. Max Linz crafts his film with a keen sense of Berlin’s sensitivities, urban backdrops, office décor and academic attire. And he exaggerates decadent university jargon with gusto, its buzzwords functioning almost like the bait in behavioural studies. By the end, the film has practically become a musical, with a catchy tune that could be a post-capitalist revolutionary anthem: “Why can’t it be nice here, why are we not happy?”
Country(ies) : GERMANY
Berlinale - Berlin IFF 2019 ForumBAFICI 2019 Int'l Official SelectionLichter Filmfest Frankfurt 2019 (Zukunft Deutscher Film)