Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde

From the present-day metro, the camera takes us up to the surface, where we recognise a feverishly throbbing Berlin, 1931. This is the modern Grossstadt par excellence, captured at a highly complex moment leading up to a tragic future − we can see the Nazis already shouting in the streets. Our protagonist is the young Dr. Fabian, who works at an advertising agency during the day. In the evenings he explores the city’s extravagant nightlife together with his wealthy left-radical friend Labude, and he falls in love with the beautiful Cornelia. Political uncertainty and dismissal from his job don’t matter so much, but how can he reconcile his ironic detachment with the pain of love?

Director Dominik Graf, honoured with a retrospective at IFFR in 2013, is probably Germany’s most prolific and versatile film and television maker. For this compelling adaptation of Kästner’s autobiographical interbellum classic, Fabian, he forges a unique and stylish unity from a wide range of cinematic tools, in which intimate moments and hectic staging succeed each other at a rapid pace − as if history could still be caught up with.

Also see Big Talk: Dominik Graf.

Trailer

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