Longing

Valeska Grisebach was born in Bremen in 1968. She grew up in Berlin, first studying Philosophy and German before moving to Munich and finally to Vienna, where she began a course of Direction at the Vienna Film Academy in 1993. Her film project Sprechen und Nichtsprechen formed part of an exhibition at the Museum of Applied Art in Vienna in 1995. Her first short In der Wueste Gobi (1997) documents the intellectual games of two friends; their expectations of life, fortune, love and work. Her second short documentary Berlino (1999) is about a troop of Italian construction workers on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Grisebach’s graduation film – her first full-length feature Mein Stern (2000), co-produced by the “Konrad Wolf” Academy of Film & Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg, ZDF and 3sat – met with immediate international recognition. It tells the story of a boy and a girl, both about 15, both played by inexperienced actors, who go through the canon and rituals of a first relationship, exploring each other’s bodies and experimenting with meaningful words. It is a marvelous interwoven picture of uncertain longing and the desire for adulthood. Mein Stern ran at festivals in Berlin, Locarno, Toronto, Chicago, London, Istanbul and Rotterdam in 2001, winning numerous prizes. Grisebach’s most recent film to date – Longing (Sehnsucht, 2006) – is a village melodrama, also with an ensemble of amateur actors, which even made it to the Competition block at this year’s Berlinale and recently won the Special Jury Award in Buenos Aires. —http://www.german-films.de