The twenty-seventh annual survey of contemporary German filmmaking notes the emergence of strong new writing/directing talents—Valeska Grisbech's Sehnsucht (Longing) was lauded at the last Berlin Film Festival; Hans Steinbirchler's Winter Journey returns Hanna Schygulla to the German screen; Axel Koenzen's Firn is a strong and suspenseful drama of domestic betrayal; and Chris Kraus's Four Minutes took the top prize at the Shanghai Film Festival. Kino! 2006 also celebrates the return of veterans such as Andreas Dresen, with his new comedy Summer in Berlin; Romuald Karmakar, with his record of pre-9/11 lectures at the Al Quds mosque (Hamburg Lectures); and Michael Verhoeven, with his eye-opening documentary about the complicity of the ordinary German soldier in the murder of civilians (The Unknown Soldier). New German Cinema remains lively, surprising, and unafraid. All films in German with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film; in collaboration with German Films Service + Marketing (Munich), and its New York representative Oliver Mahrdt. Presented with the support of the Goethe-Institute, New York and the German Consulate General in New York. Thanks to Christian Dorsch, Managing Director, and Nicole Kaufmann, Project Coordinator, German Films; and to all the distributors, producers, and directors participating in this series.

Vier Minuten (Four Minutes). 2006. Written and directed by Chris Kraus. With Monica Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung. Kraus has written screenplays for German filmmakers such as Volker Schlöndorff, Pepe Danquart, and Rosa von Praunheim. His feverish and compelling second feature, a classical melodrama, imagines the tempestuous relationship between two women-a savage young woman in prison for a brutal murder she may not have committed and an eighty-year-old who has taught piano in jail for years and who believes the inmate has a prodigious talent. Four Minutes walked off with the Grand Prize at the 2006 Shanghai International Film Festival. 112 min.
Thursday, October 26, 6:00; Saturday, October 28, 4:15. T1

Der Unbekannte Soldat (The Unknown Soldier-What Did You Do in the War, Dad?). 2006. Written and directed by Michael Verhoeven. Verhoeven, applauded for his fiction-based-on-facts features The White Rose (1982) and The Nasty Girl (1990), returns with this documentary about the shocking effect that the Wehrmacht Exhibition (a photography exhibition showing ordinary soldiers killing civilians) had on the German public. 97 min.
Friday, October 27, 6:00; Sunday, October 29, 2:00. T1

Hamburger Lektionen. 2006. Directed by Romuald Karmakar. In 2000, Mohammed Fazazi, then the Imam of the Al Quds mosque in Hamburg, gave several lessons in the mosque's prayer room. These talks were recorded and distributed in the mosque's bookshop. Karmakar, adapting the same technique he used in The Himmler Project (2000), asked an actor to read to the camera two of these lessons, which were more than likely heard by those who regularly attended services-three of whom were perpetrators of 9/11 and members of the "Hamburg cell." 133 min.
Friday, October 27, 8:00; Sunday, October 29, 4:15. T1

Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer in Berlin). 2005. Directed by Andreas Dresen. Screenplay by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. With Nadja Uhl, Inka Friedrich, Andreas Schmidt. Dresen, known to MoMA's audiences for Grill Point (2001) and Willenbrock (2004), returns to Kino! with a smart comedy about two girlfriends sharing a flat. One is a single mother who observes life from their balcony and gets involved with all the right men-who turn out all wrong. 107 min.
Saturday, October 28, 2:00; Friday, November 3, 8:30. T1

Sehnsucht (Longing). 2006. Written and directed by Valeska Grisebach. With Ilka Welz, Andreas Muller, Anett Dornbusch. Grisebach's debut feature, about a man who serves as a volunteer fireman and the woman he has loved since childhood, was a revelation at February's Berlin Film Festival. Set in rural Germany and featuring amateur actors who had to take their holidays to be in the film, Longing begins, in the style of John Cassavetes, with a situation rather than scripted dialogue. 90 min.
Saturday, October 28, 6:30; Monday, October 30, 8:30. T1

Winterreise (Winter Journey). 2006. Directed by Hans Steinbichler. Screenplay by Martin Rauhaus. With Josef Bierbichler, Hanna Schygulla, Sibel Kekilli. Steinbichler's first fictional feature after many documentaries, Winter Journey owes something to Schubert and welcomes Schygulla back to New German Cinema. An abrasive sixty-year-old with an ailing wife, hoodwinked out of his savings by a questionable investment in Kenya, travels to Nairobi in an unlikely attempt to get his money back. 95 min.
Saturday, October 28, 8:30. T1; Wednesday, November 1, 6:00. T2

Fathers and Sons/Separation and Reunification
Firn. 2006. Written and directed by Axel Koenzen for the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. With Robert Gwisdek, Uwe Preiss. An angry young man takes a tension-filled mountain-climbing holiday with the father who once abandoned him. 40 min.
Netto. 2005. Written and directed by Robert Thalheim. With Milan Peschel, Sebastian Butz, Stephanie C. Koetz. A fifteen-year-old who grew up with his mother in reunified West Berlin decides to live with his father, an unemployed country music fan, in the former East. The son teaches his father a thing or two about capitalism. 87 min.
Monday, October 30, 6:00. T1; Thursday, November 2, 8:30. T2

Next Generation
This program presents ten films, all made in 2006, from German film schools, including Auf dem Feld (In the Field), Philipp Wolf, Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakedmie, Berlin; Der Geist von St. Pauli (St. Pauli Forever), Michael Sommer, Hamburg Media School; Bazar, Markus Sehr and Mathias Kraemer, IFS Internationale Filmschule, Cologne; Our Man in Nirvana, Jan Koester, Hochschule fuer Film und Fernsehen “Konrad Wolf,” Potsdam/Babelsberg; Delivery, Till Nowak, Fachhochschule Mainz; Heim (Home), Marc Brummond, Hamburg Media School; My Date from Hell, Tim Weimann and Tom Bracht, Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg; Kalte Haut (Cold Skin), Sebastian Kutzli, Hochschule fuer Fernsehen und Film, Munich; Promenade d’après midi, Claire Walka, Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, Offenbach; and Ich rette das Multiversum (I’ll Save the Multiverse), Ulf Groote, Hochschule fuer bildende Kuenste, Hamburg. Program 90 min.

Wednesday, November 1, 8:00. T2; Friday, November 3, 6:15. T1