Black Box: German drama by Aslı Özge, which addresses the current issues of our time with a portrait of an angry metropolitan house community.
Plot and background
Riot in the backyard of an apartment building, in the middle of a big German city: Johannes Horn (Felix Kramer) makes no friends when he has a glass office container set up in the yard. Thanks to the bulky container, the trash cans now have to be moved, which the tenant on the first floor, Erik Behr (Christian Berkel), doesn’t like at all. And the new situation is also a thorn in the side of many other neighbors, while other residents have completely different problems. When the inner courtyard is finally closed off by the police, a state of emergency ensues. Due to an unexplained incident, all entrances to the courtyard are sealed off, causing the rumor mill to bubble among the unsettled residents. Fears, suspicions, and suspicions run rampant, and prejudices divide the neighborhood. In the microcosm of the house community, relationships are based on the pursuit of power and profit, whereby those involved quickly lose sight of the true danger.
The official trailer promises an exciting social drama:
“Black Box” – background, cast, theatrical release
In “Black Box”, German-Turkish filmmaker Aslı Özge (“Men on the Bridge”) addresses the disintegrating sense of community and drifting apart of overall social and democratic structures in today’s world. The drama addresses current issues and topics of the day, such as the struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, class differences and prejudices. Using the example of a metropolitan house community, Özge performs a metaphor of our society.
The house community is played by a top-class cast consisting of Luise Heyer (“Der Junge muss an die frische Luft”), Felix Kramer (“Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen”), Christian Berkel (“Operation Walküre – Das Stauffenberg Attentat”), Manal Issa (“The Swimmers”), Anne Ratte-Polle (“Two Sides of the Abyss”), André Szymanski (“In the Labyrinth of Silence”), Sascha Alexander Geršak (“Gladbeck”), Jonathan Berlin (“The Passport Forger”) and Inka Friedrich (“Summer in Front of the Balcony”).
Aslı Özge’s new feature film will premiere at the 40th Munich Film Festival as the opening of the “New German Cinema” series. On August 10, 2023, the socio-critical drama will then be released in cinemas nationwide.
