Hanna Schygulla, born 1943 in Köningshütte, Germany has been one of the most remarkable actresses in world cinema for almost five decades. She started her career in the core group of Rainer Werner Fassbinder; described by the director as his most important actresses, Schygulla worked with him in over twenty films. Fassbinder admired the glamour of Hollywood stars and Schygulla became a type of an echo, a reflection, or a German variant of those mythical figures (Harlow, Dietrich, Stanwyck, Monroe, Bette Davis…), and very quickly turned into a star herself.
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) forms a unique allegory of the Western Germany’s “economic wonder” and brought Schygulla the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival. Lili Marlene (1981), set in the middle of the storms of World War II, is filled with double exposure of fake identities and the treacherous placebo reality of public life.
Other selected films by Schygulla which will be screened in Sodankylä are Volker Schlöndorff’s tragical anti-war vision The Circle of Deceit (1981), Jean-Luc Godard’s beautiful and complex Passion (1982), Amos Gitai’s myth modernisation in the context of political refugees Golem, the Spirit of the Exile (1992) and Fatih Akin’s strapping and still alarmingly topical The Edge of Heaven (2007). Anne Imbert’s documentary film Hanna Schygulla, Whatever the Dream Is (2012) will be screened in Sodankylä at the beginning of Schygulla’s morning discussion.
In the 1990s, Schygulla began a successful career as a beloved chanson singer. Out of the dozens of acknowledgements she received, the award for the Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival 1983 for Marco Ferreri’s The Story of Piera is worth highlighting.
Schygulla and Saura will be joined in Sodankylä by Bertrand Bonello (France), Per Fly (Denmark), Aleksander Mindadze (Russia), Gabe Klinger (USA) and Kai Wessel (Germany).