» Synopsis
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“Nightfall” is like a long sad song. Similar to a Portuguese Fado or to a Tango, transformed into images, the film talks about a life in loneliness, about poverty, the futility of love, violence and the longing for redemption.
A German town close to the Polish border. Everything has lost its apparently safe place. Unemployment rules like a plague. Also Anton is affected. His girlfriend Leni, who he has been living with for years, works as an ironer in a laundry. She tries to put life against the dark cocoon, Anton has weaved around them. A life that is not obliged to materialism and work but to sensuality, believe and the possibility of love as the ultimate anarchistic and dignified act against a barbarous environment. She tries to follow a longing, bigger than the small being in the narrow world of disintegration, fear, doubts and lethargy.
Torn apart at dusk, Leni and Anton fight alone each of them on their nocturnal odyssey through the black of the night and their own souls. Desperately rebelling against their loneliness, they will cross the lives of different people, they will be weaved in the fate of strangers, they will hurt and will get hurt, tumble, fall and get up, and they will face each other again with the taste of darkness and a certainty in their hearts which was unknown to them before.
The film speaks of love. Not of love in its beginning when it is still illusionary and charged with romantic dreams. But of love when it is about to end while it had just begun to become essential and demands to fight for it – when it has become a question of life or death.

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» Details
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Land: Deutschland / Portugal 1999.
Produktion: Mediopolis Berlin.
Co-Produktion: Filmes do Tejo, Lisboa; WDR, Köln.
Regie, Buch, Kamera: Fred Kelemen.
2. Kamera: Hans Bouma.
Schnitt: Fred Kelemen, Anja Neraal, Nicola Undritz Cope.
Ton: Jörg Theil. Tonassistenz: David Gräwe.
Mischung: Alexander Schäfer. Musik: Rainer Kirchmann.
Szenenbild: Ralf Küfner. Requisite: Anette Kuhn.
Kostüm: Daniella Petrovics. Maske: Sybille Tams.
Regie-Assistenz: Anna Schuchardt, Susanne Schmitt.
Kamera-Assistenz: Arnd Geisheimer.
Produktionskoordination: Jörg Rothe.
Produktionsleitung: Mandy Rahn.
Aufnahmeleitung: Nicole Gerhards.
Produzent: Alexander Ris.
Associate Producers: Francois d´Artemare, Maria Joao Mayer.
Redaktion: Heike Hempel, WDR.
Dramaturgische Beratung: Annedore von Donop
Darsteller: Wolfgang Michael (Anton), Verena Jasch (Leni),
Urs Remand (Paul), Isa Hochgerner (Nina), Adolfo Assor (Glockengießer),
Thomas Baumann (Mann im Ledermantel)
Format: 35 mm, 1 : 1,66, Farbe. Länge: 140 Minuten
Deutscher Verleih: Pegasus Film, Rotlintstr. 21, 60318 Frankfurt
Weltvertrieb: Kinowelt GmbH, Jenny John, Karl-Tauchnitz-Str. 10,
D-04107, Phone: +49-341-35596-415 / +49-341-35596-0,
Fax: +49-341-35596-119, E-Mail:jjohn@kinowelt.de
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