Saarbrücken 1998

Abstract

MAX-OPHÜLS-PRIZE FESTIVAL IN SAARBRÜCKEN One of the many fine moments at the 19th Max-Ophüls-Prize competition in Saarbrücken (27 January - 1 February 1998), a festival spotlighting new talent in German-language cinema, was Peter Lichtefeld's Zugvögel ...einmal nach Inari (Passage ...One Way to Inari, Germany). A strikingly photographed (cameraman Frank Griebe) roadmovie, it features Jochim Król as Hannes, a shy beer-truck-driver and railroad-nut whose peculiar hobby is train schedules and knowing the shortest way from place to place. When Hannes enters the "First International Competition for Fastest Timetable Reading," the contest brings him to the town of Inari in the far north of Finland, But not before he finds himself involved in a murder case with a police inspector in hot pursuit. Along the way he meets, and falls in love with Sirpa (Outi Mäenpää), a Finnish miss who gets off the train in Helsinki and thus turns Hannes's own...