The City Below

• Nico Krebitz: Svenja Steve
• Robert Hunger -Bühler: Roland Cordes
• Mark Waschke: Steve Oliver
• Corinna Kirchhoff: Claudia Cordes
• Van Lam Vissay: Andre Lau
• Wolfgang Böck: Werner Lobau
• Paul Alberts: Hermann Josef Esch
• Oliver Broumis: Uwe Maas
• Robert Schupp: Frank Kress Nick
• Alexandra von Schwerin: Dr. Silver Iron

The City Below is a German film director Christoph Hochhäusler from the year 2010. It was premiered in the Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and ran on March 31, 2011 in the German cinemas.

Action

The couple Steve moved to Frankfurt am Main, because he has there taken a job as an investment banker. His wife Svenja is looking for work as a picture editor. You feel like a stranger in the new city and, increasingly, in her husband's life. She is bored and a little to himself. This makes it very easy to influence.

In this mood she meets her husband's boss Roland Cordes, who was just elected as the banker of the year. He has to cover up the murder of a member of staff in Indonesia and prepare to take over a large Konzernes. All this effortlessly succeeds. To switch off, he looks to the Fixen junkies who are paid by his closest colleagues for it.

Roland Cordes is just like Svenja Steve looking for a feeling. They meet and think of each other can give them this feeling. Cordes added Svenja's husband to the post in Indonesia and so does the way for his affair with Sven. It is a rehearsed behavior to clear obstacles out of the way. A cowardice that Svenja him when she finds out once, very amiss.

The whole situation arouses in Roland Cordes missing the feelings that he has not grown because he has no handle, deal with them. At the same time the banking system runs completely out of control. After an attack on a journalist it is, Roland Cordes run amok. But it is the system that runs amok, he is only the deputy.

At the end of the film Svenja and Oliver are back together, maybe there is an uprising, people take to the streets, it remains to be seen what will come.

Background

Filming took place from August 26 to September 26, 2009 in Frankfurt am Main and Cologne. The project received funding from the Film and Media NRW, of the Federal Film Board (FFA ) and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF ).

By the end of 2011, there were 14,000 admissions in Germany, reached 8,000 in France and 3,600 in the Netherlands. The TV - Original Air Date was 11 November 2012 at the transmitter arte, which was like the WDR involved in the production program.

Reviews

" The loosely on the biblical story of David and Bathsheba ajar drama portrayed in the context of the Frankfurt high finance people whose self- construction to love encompasses all areas of life from the power over one's own biography. Highly detailed and realistic in his milieu drawing, the film sketches the intense image of a sphere whose inhabitants has slipped away in the course of their permanent, self -performance 'of the relation to reality. "

" The City Below is an unusual and disturbing film. Imperceptibly, he develops a suction effect, which increases until the last scene. And this can Hochhäusler the story in the viewer's head start over again. "

" The human instinct of self- destruction says Christoph Hochhäusler there to best visualize where - at least apparently - has the most to lose. Namely where everything has already been achieved: In the boardroom, on the city. With this setup, however, he is not far from the classical tragedy. With the key difference, however, that at Hochhäusler not hubris caused the decline, but the case is evoked by the characters themselves and entirely desirable. "

Awards

• 2010: German Film in the category script to Ulrich Peltzer and Christoph Hochhäusler
• 2011: Prize of the German Film Critics for Best Music goes to Benedikt Schiefer
• 2011: Günter Rohrbach Film Award for Christoph Hochhäusler ( Best Film ) and icolette Krebitz ( Best Actor Award )