IAPL2012-CB-0531-052.. - The International Association for ...

SPECIAL EVENTS
FILM SCREENING
THE POLL DIARIES (2010)
Directed by Chris Kraus
SOLARIS CINEMA, SOLARIS CULTURAL CENTRE
ESTONIA PST 9
MONDAY, 28 MAY
18:30-21:00
Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role,
Best Production Design. Film Award in Gold. Bundesfilmpreis, 2011.
In the summer of 1914, thirteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin
to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate
in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking,
neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea. Oda arrives there bearing her
mother’s coffin and a gift requested by her surgeon father: a jarred, two-headed fetus
to add to his laboratory of gruesome curiosities. Ebbo von Siering (Edgar Selge) sees
himself in his daughter when she calmly and expertly learns to suture the corpse of
a cat. What he fails to recognize - and what Oda luckily understands - is that their
interest in science is their only similarity. His dedication to experimentation is linked
to an appalling obsession with power and destruction, while Oda is genuinely curious
about life. Her quick, quiet intelligence complements her humanity and her lucid
understanding of right and wrong. When she strays from a family picnic and discovers a
badly wounded Estonian anarchist, she helps him without a second thought, smuggling
him into her father’s lab and putting her new surgical skills to good use. As their illicit
friendship deepens, family turmoil escalates and war closes in. The safe haven of the
community collapses, forcing Oda’s family to make impossible choices. (Source: IMDB)
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