2nd contribution to the special program of the 18th Ahrenshooper Filmnächte, moderated by Lutz Pehnert
STARS ABOVE US by Christina Ebelt (D 2019, 102 min)
A neat young woman, dressed in a light blue skirt and white blouse, walks through tall grass into the forest with her suitcase. She is coming home from work as a flight attendant, and the boy accompanying her has just had a normal day at school. Melli (Franziska Hartmann) and her 9-year-old son Ben (Claudio Magno) are homeless and sleeping in a tent in the woods. This multi-award-winning drama vividly shows how quickly a person can slip into homelessness and thus lose the essential pillar of their middle-class existence.
CHRISTINA EBELT
After living abroad in New Zealand, Christina Ebelt, born in Filderstadt in 1979, worked as a filmmaker in Berlin. She studied philosophy at Humboldt University before moving to Cologne to study at the Academy of Media Arts. In collaboration with Jan Bonny, she wrote the screenplay for the feature film GEGENÜBER, which premiered in Cannes in 2007. In 2019, her directorial debut STERNE ÜBER UNS premiered at the Munich International Film Festival and received numerous awards. The jury of the Ahrenshooper Filmnächte 2023 awarded the festival's sponsorship prize to Ebelt's latest film MONSTER IM KOPF, which is why the director is staying at Künstlerhaus Lukas for the 2024 festival and is part of this year's special program.
