Oscilloscope Laboratories, the distribution company set up by late Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch, has acquired U.S. rights to The Universal Theory, which recently premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival (as the title The Theory of Everything). A theatrical release is planned for 2024.
From director Timm Kröger, the German drama is set in 1962 at a quantum mechanics conference in an isolated lodge nestled amid the towering landscapes of the Swiss Alps, and is the story of a gifted young physicist, his curmudgeonly mentor and an enigmatic jazz pianist who knows things about our wunderkind scientist that he’s never told another living soul. As the description goes, the film is “driven by astonishing twists, improbable coincidences and Hitchcockian suspense,” and “considers the metaverse theory from a refreshingly intelligent point of view.”
The main cast includes Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross, Hanns Zischler, Gottfried Breitfuss, David Bennent, Philippe Graber and Imogen Kogge.
From director Timm Kröger, the German drama is set in 1962 at a quantum mechanics conference in an isolated lodge nestled amid the towering landscapes of the Swiss Alps, and is the story of a gifted young physicist, his curmudgeonly mentor and an enigmatic jazz pianist who knows things about our wunderkind scientist that he’s never told another living soul. As the description goes, the film is “driven by astonishing twists, improbable coincidences and Hitchcockian suspense,” and “considers the metaverse theory from a refreshingly intelligent point of view.”
The main cast includes Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross, Hanns Zischler, Gottfried Breitfuss, David Bennent, Philippe Graber and Imogen Kogge.
- 10/5/2023
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Imagine that one of Hitchcock’s villains — say, the guy missing the tip of a pinkie in “The 39 Steps,” or the shrink who runs the institute in “Spellbound” — did not simply come from a place of murderous intent but from a different place altogether, perhaps another dimension. Imagine that villain’s supranatural malfeasance backdropped by jagged mountains, captured in black-and-white so crisp it could cut, and widescreen frames so wide whole Alpine ranges fit comfortably inside them. And imagine it all unfolding to a deliberately overpowering score, like Bernard Herrman and Scott Walker conceived a baby during a sonic boom. Now you are somewhere near Timm Kröger’s superbly crafted “The Universal Theory” an overlong but enjoyable metaphysical thriller that delivers pastiche so meticulous it becomes its own source of supremely cinematic pleasure.
It is 1962, in the mountainous Grisons canton of Switzerland. The Cold War is at its coldest, its...
It is 1962, in the mountainous Grisons canton of Switzerland. The Cold War is at its coldest, its...
- 9/3/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Have you heard of a movie about a brilliant quantum physicist who travels to a remote location so he can test a groundbreaking theory that could change the world forever? It’s shot in breathtaking black-and-white, and features Nazis and a doomed romance.
If you’re thinking of Oppenheimer, you’re wrong by a good two decades (in terms of the time setting), as well as a good hundred million dollars (in terms of budget). And yet, like a smaller, distant cousin to the Christopher Nolan blockbuster, German director Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything (Die Theorie Von Allem) is also an artfully made, ambitious period piece where reality sometimes bends to the laws of modern physics.
However, the similarities end there. Nolan’s movie was science-fact, remaining as close to historic events as technically possible. Kröger’s second feature is more of a genre-jumping experiment, combining Hollywood sci-fi...
If you’re thinking of Oppenheimer, you’re wrong by a good two decades (in terms of the time setting), as well as a good hundred million dollars (in terms of budget). And yet, like a smaller, distant cousin to the Christopher Nolan blockbuster, German director Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything (Die Theorie Von Allem) is also an artfully made, ambitious period piece where reality sometimes bends to the laws of modern physics.
However, the similarities end there. Nolan’s movie was science-fact, remaining as close to historic events as technically possible. Kröger’s second feature is more of a genre-jumping experiment, combining Hollywood sci-fi...
- 9/3/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
For all the major films from established, auteur directors in the 2023 Venice Film Festival’s main competition (David Fincher’s The Killer, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Sofia Coppela’s Priscilla and Michael Mann’s Ferrari, to name just a few), when he made the official lineup announcement on July 31, festival director Alberto Barbera reserved his lengthiest praise for a small film from Germany.
So enthused was Barbera for Timm Kröger’s second feature The Theory of Everything — a black-and-white Hitchcockian melodrama set in a 5-star hotel in the Swiss Alps (and a “kind of” sequel to his 2014 debut The Council of Birds) — that he claimed it was one of the very first films selected to compete for this year’s Golden Lion.
“It was really wonderful what he said, and he really described the film in a lovely way,” says Kröger, speaking ahead of The Theory of Everything’s world...
So enthused was Barbera for Timm Kröger’s second feature The Theory of Everything — a black-and-white Hitchcockian melodrama set in a 5-star hotel in the Swiss Alps (and a “kind of” sequel to his 2014 debut The Council of Birds) — that he claimed it was one of the very first films selected to compete for this year’s Golden Lion.
“It was really wonderful what he said, and he really described the film in a lovely way,” says Kröger, speaking ahead of The Theory of Everything’s world...
- 9/3/2023
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
German director Timm Kröger’s mystery thriller “The Universal Theory” has started shooting at the ski resort of St. Jakob in Defereggen, Austria. The film’s first image has been released.
The cast is led by Jan Bülow, who starred in “Lindenberg! Mach dein Ding,” and Olivia Ross, a Paris-born, British actress whose credits include History’s “Knightfall,” Netflix’s “The Old Guard,” and the BBC’s “War and Peace” and “Killing Eve.”
Kröger previously directed Venice Critics Week entry “The Council of Birds.” The screenplay was written by Roderick Warich (“The Trouble with Being Born”) and Kröger.
Shot in Cinemascope, in black and white, the 1960s set story unfolds against the backdrop of the Alps. Johannes, a doctor of physics, travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Alps. A series of mysterious incidents occur on site. He meets his femme fatale, Karin, a jazz pianist...
The cast is led by Jan Bülow, who starred in “Lindenberg! Mach dein Ding,” and Olivia Ross, a Paris-born, British actress whose credits include History’s “Knightfall,” Netflix’s “The Old Guard,” and the BBC’s “War and Peace” and “Killing Eve.”
Kröger previously directed Venice Critics Week entry “The Council of Birds.” The screenplay was written by Roderick Warich (“The Trouble with Being Born”) and Kröger.
Shot in Cinemascope, in black and white, the 1960s set story unfolds against the backdrop of the Alps. Johannes, a doctor of physics, travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Alps. A series of mysterious incidents occur on site. He meets his femme fatale, Karin, a jazz pianist...
- 1/21/2022
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Sandra Wollner's The Trouble with Being Born is exclusively showing on Mubi in most countries starting November 24, 2021 in the series The New Auteurs.The initial idea of this setting, of a man living with a childlike android, came from my co-author Roderick Warich, and I immediately jumped onto that because I had been looking to tell a story from a non-human perspective for some time. The story I was writing back then was about a girl that did not want to grow up, nor did it even want to be human.“As she was playing, as she was running with the other kids, she suddenly felt it and stopped. All at once it was as if an incredible emptiness spread within her and around her, as if she could suddenly see the impenetrable black that had always been behind that blue sky, which she had just not noticed until now.
- 11/18/2021
- MUBI
It’s a strange feeling to be among the earliest audiences — and who can tell just how many more such a disturbing, hard-sell film will reach — for a project destined for notoriety. But then Sandra Wollner’s “The Trouble With Being Born” inspires nothing but strange feelings, from unnerving horror to shocked admiration to visceral disgust to that specific type of disorienting nausea that comes from the fractional delay between your eye processing a well-composed image, and your brain comprehending the implications of the actions so coolly depicted.
That gap is just one of the many conceptual fissures into which Wollner’s desperately creepy, queasy, thought-provoking film gnaws: image vs. implication; human vs. non-human; real vs. unreal. If “The Trouble With Being Born” lives anywhere, it is in a house in a forest on the deepest, most sunless lower slopes of the uncanny valley.
Indecipherable, abstract, staticky images flicker and jiggle,...
That gap is just one of the many conceptual fissures into which Wollner’s desperately creepy, queasy, thought-provoking film gnaws: image vs. implication; human vs. non-human; real vs. unreal. If “The Trouble With Being Born” lives anywhere, it is in a house in a forest on the deepest, most sunless lower slopes of the uncanny valley.
Indecipherable, abstract, staticky images flicker and jiggle,...
- 3/1/2020
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
At first glance Elli appears to be a normal young girl living with her single father, spending idle afternoons lazing by a sunlit pool. But a disturbing reality is soon revealed: Elli is actually an android whose memories were programmed by the man she lovingly calls “Daddy.” Before long the true nature of their relationship becomes apparent, until the night Elli sets off to follow a ghostly echo into the woods.
“The Trouble With Being Born” is the unsettling second feature from Austrian director Susan Wollner, who won the German Film Critics’ Award in 2019 for “The Impossible Picture.” An eerie, metaphysical exploration of the identities we create for ourselves, and how they can come unraveled, pic plays in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival.
Wollner spoke to Variety the morning after the world premiere about the isolation of living in a world that’s growing increasingly virtual. She...
“The Trouble With Being Born” is the unsettling second feature from Austrian director Susan Wollner, who won the German Film Critics’ Award in 2019 for “The Impossible Picture.” An eerie, metaphysical exploration of the identities we create for ourselves, and how they can come unraveled, pic plays in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival.
Wollner spoke to Variety the morning after the world premiere about the isolation of living in a world that’s growing increasingly virtual. She...
- 2/26/2020
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
German helmer Roderick Warich is fresh from the premiere of his arthouse thriller 2557 at Argentina's Bafici festival and based on a quartet of clips released from the film this looks to be an intriguing film for fans of mid-era Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and the following Thai indie wave. Here's a translation of the festival's description: Robbery, nightclubs and love triangles define the turbulent life of Salisa, a twenty-year-old Thai girl who must flee to the dusty plains of Isaan because of a coup. The idea of Bangkok as a port of arrival and repository for drifting Westerners has been underpinned for decades by urban tales and legends, and also by the imagination of creators of all kinds. The German filmmaker Roderick Warich takes this stereotype...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 5/1/2017
- Screen Anarchy
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.