Franta

 

Content

As a young soldier Franta experiences a war that destroys all hopes and life - before he has really had any chance to live. The memories of Mascha, his young wife, blend with the pitilessness of his surroundings. He loses his gentleness and becomes like the war: cold and insensitive. During one onslaught he is badly injured in the groin and loses conciousness. When he awakes in the military hospital, the others laugh about him, about the fact that his "masculinity has been shot off". When his young wife, whom he loves, come

s to take him home, he doesn't tell her what had happened to him. Desire and longings oppress the man who is no longer a man. The story of Franta's path to salvation begins...

 

Press Reviews

 

The Independent

Well liked was the West German film "Franta" which takes a war theme - the traumas of a World War One veteran - and steeps it in the primary colours of German Expressionist painting.

Sheila Johnston

The Guardian

"In it's second showing anywhere it deeply affected the audience with the unique use of colours and a deep doomy beauty ... A hypnotic experience."

Bob Flynn

The Observer

„The best feature I’ve seen so far, Mathias Allary’s ,Franta‘, is a visiually stunnig account of a First World War German soldier returning home emasculated. […] It makes its 29-year-old Munich based director a strong contender for the Charles Chaplin Award.“

Philip French

Edinburgh festival

"The premiere of " Franta " introduced an extraordinary and original new talent in Mathias Allary. He has created an entirely original film style to suit the work, and employs that style with impressive confidence and sure narrative command. Allary's style is unique and thrilling."

David Robinson

filmecho, filmwoche

"Among the new film-directors that are worth discovering, is Mathias Allary with his Chinese puzzle " Franta " which is based on a novel by Ernst Weiß. You will find a completely new perspective."

Tip Berlin

"For years, nobody in our cinema went on so far, without loosing control of his medium. Franta " is the German cinema, we have lost: determined, unimpressed by fashions, enraged and in spite of it calculated precisely in its expression. That there has been no cinema of that kind after Fassbinder is sad enough, the scandal to overlook its flaming up should not be added."

Wolfgang Brenner

Tageszeitung München (TZ)

"...catches the strength of surrealistic poetry."

Frauke Hanck

 

 

Awards

 

Festivals

 

 

TV-Screenings

Südwest 3 „Debüt im Dritten“ (23.10.1989)

 

Availability