"Cry your eyes out"

Cry Your Eyes Out – the name says it all! We dedicating this year’s retrospective to the aesthetics of grand emotions in melodrama. Hannes Brühwiler, curator of the retrospective, and our festival director Dr Sascha Keilholz have selected a total of 12 works from 1945 to 2012 that invite viewers to rediscover the significance of this subgenre in the history of filmmaking while indulging in the great emotional power of cinema. The selection of films includes key American works that reflect Hollywood’s formative role in creating melodrama, as well as works from Japan, Egypt, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom. The diversity of this film genre will be reflected not only geographically, but also in terms of content: classically, these dramas focus on female characters, although they are directed by men. The feelings of the main characters are at odds with society and its values, so that melodrama can also be interpreted as a genre offering a critique of society.

Passionate empathy and sympathy are thus more than welcome – and if the audience sheds a tear or two, that’s entirely in keeping with the curators’ intentions. The retrospective will be accompanied by a discussion featuring a panel of experts. Admission to the discussion is free; the venue, date and panellists will be announced in due course.

The films in chronological order:

›Mildred Pierce‹ Director: Michael Curtiz, USA, 1945
›All That Heaven Allows‹ Director: Douglas Sirk, USA, 1955
›Night River‹ Director: Kōzaburō Yoshimura, Japan, 1956
›An Affair to Remember‹ Director: Leo McCarey, USA, 1957
›Cairo Station‹ Director: Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1958
›The Passion of Anna‹ Director: Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1969
›Rose la Rose: fille publique‹ Director: Paul Vecchiali, France, 1986
›The Long Day Closes‹ Director: Terence Davies‹, UK, 1992
›Hongkong Love Affair‹ Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Hong Kong, 1996
›Breaking the Waves‹ Director: Lars von Trier, Denmark, 1996
›In the Mood for Love‹ Director: Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 2000
›The Broken Circle Breakdown‹ Director: Felix van Groeningen, Belgium, 2012

You can find more information about the films in our press release.