Big Talk: Dominik Graf

In 2013, IFFR honoured Dominik Graf with his first major retrospective abroad, resulting in the international discovery of Germany’s arguably most thought-provoking modern auteur. Since then, Graf returned twice to Rotterdam: in 2015, with Die geliebten Schwestern (2014) − his biographical film on Friedrich Schiller and the German bourgeoisie’s struggle with revolutionary dreams, defeats and desires − and in 2018, with Der rote Schatten − his meditation on how the official history of 1970s left-wing terrorism got twisted and abused. This year, Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde − a strikingly original, formally fresh and inventive adaptation of Erich Kästner’s classic, Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten − is being celebrated with a long overdue Big Talk.

Dominik Graf emerged in the late 1970s as part of a filmmaker generation set on revolutionising mass entertainment, starting with television crime and adventure. The vast majority of Graf’s films were in fact done for TV, including work for series well-known in the Netherlands like Der Fahnder and Tatort. Police procedurals became the backbone of Graf’s oeuvre, which over the decades branched out into ever-wider spheres of genres and expressions, including essayistic documentaries, high modernist melodramas and silly comedies.

In this Big Talk, moderated by IFFR Programmer Olaf Möller, Graf will discuss his vast career in television and cinema, with a special emphasis on his work with writers, actors and composers, as he himself is also active in these spheres.

Sat 5 June, 16:00, free admission, IFFR.com/talks