Run Lola Run (1998) 25th Anniversary Screenings
Director: Tom Tykwer Run Time: 81 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1998
Starring: Armin Rohde, Franka Potente, Herbert Knaup, Moritz Bleibtreu, Nina Petri
Country: Germany
Language: German, English, Japanese
About the film:
Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema, 1999 Sundance Film Festival.
“An exuberant and creative film game that amps things up for a run of nonstop action that tantalizes the senses and bombards the mind with an adrenaline rush of stimuli.”
—Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
When we meet Manni, a small time courier for big time gangster, he is working a standard pick-up/drop-off, and everything is going just fine. When the job is done, all he has to do is wait for his girlfriend, the orange-haired punk girl Lola, to pick him up. But today is unlike any other day. Due to an incident while she was buying a pack of cigarettes, Lola is late, and Lola is never late. One stroke of bad luck leads to another, and by the time Manni calls Lola, he is at a pay phone with a big, big, big problem. His unforgiving boss will meet him in twenty minutes to pick up 100,000 marks; money that Manni, suddenly, does not have.
Lola rushes out of her apartment and down the street, attempting to get to Manni and, somehow, pick up 100,000 marks on the way. She tears through the city, in a whirl of bums, nuns, babies, and guns. Down sidewalks, into offices, through traffic and back again. As her feet slap the pavement and the seconds tick down, the tiniest choices become life altering (or ending) decisions, and the fine line between fate and fortune begins to blur.
About the filmmaker:
Born in Wuppertal, Germany in 1965, Tykwer directed his first Super-8 film at the age of 11. A self-taught filmmaker, Tykwer took over management of the “Moviemento” cinema in Berlin in 1988. He has worked as a script supervisor and provided several film portraits for television of his favorite film directors, including Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders, and Peter Greenaway.
In 1993, Tykwer directed his first film, Deadly Maria. Together with director Wolfgang Becker, he wrote the screenplay for Life Is All You Get (1997), which received several international awards. In 1997, his romantic thriller Winter Sleepers was also warmly received internationally. After screening at major film festivals like Venice and Toronto, his film Run Lola Run (1998) received numerous accolades, including an Audience Award for Best World Cinema at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film in 2000, and an NBR Award for being among the Top Foreign Films in 1999. The film was also selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 71st Academy Awards.
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