ASEM Film Festival – German contribution

The German film participating in the ASEM Film Festival that will take place in Hanoi from May 15th to May 22nd.

Vier Minuten (Four Minutes)
Germany 2007, 112 Min.

Director: Chris Kraus
with: Monica Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung, Jasmin Tabatabai

15 May, 3pm (The film will be shown in original with English subtitles)
17 May, 8pm (Vietnamese dubbing)
National Cinema Centre

Note: There are 2 film festivals on in Hanoi at roughly the same time: the European Film Festival and the ASEM Film Festival.

Music is a universal language, not only because everyone intuitively understands it. It also offers the possibility of an acoustic response where words fail or are inappropriate. The film brings together in the isolated world of a prison, two women who have two things in common: problems with themselves and the world, and an almost fantastic devotion to music.

Traude Krueger has for 60 years had the difficult job of piano teacher in a women’s prison. When the 80-year-old encounters the young inmate Jenny, she meets someone with an unpredictable propensity for violence against herself and others which discharges itself vehemently and without regard for loss. But the fact that in Jenny a great musical talent slumbers, which she has since childhood denied, wakes in both women an ambition which seemed long defeated. For both women, shadows of the past have created a hard shell which forces them together. So they take on the challenge. At times fighting together and at times fighting against one another, they struggle towards an important music competition in which Jenny will have four minutes to describe her personality in sound.

Free tickets available at Goethe-Institut Hanoi