TIFF19 REVIEW: Pelikanblut [Pelican Blood] [2020]

I’m the lucky one. Writer/director Katrin Gebbe is not messing around with her latest film Pelikanblut [Pelican Blood]. What starts as a psychological drama about a mother desperate to provide her new daughter the love necessary to free her from the demons of a traumatic past gradually escalates into a supernatural thriller augmenting what science attempts to prove. So while the explanation of a piece of artwork depicting a pelican that pierced its chest to reanimate its dead children with its blood first appears as metaphor, it just might be…

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REVIEW: Tore tanzt [Nothing Bad Can Happen] [2013]

“Sometimes you have to defend yourself” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the words “Inspired by true events” only appear onscreen at the end of Tore tanzt [Nothing Bad Can Happen]. The move might be specific to its American release since events as atrocious as those depicted are hardly the type to remain unknown in its home country of Germany before cameras rolled, but boy does reading it pack a punch here. Katrin Gebbe‘s debut is a tough pill to swallow on its own—a story so dedicated to its…

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