Screened as part of NZIFF 2016

Wild 2016

Directed by Nicolette Krebitz Fresh

A chance encounter with a wolf proves to be inexorably life-changing for the lonely young woman at the heart of this striking German drama, which takes the idea of getting back to nature to an irrational extreme.

Germany In German with English subtitles
97 minutes DCP

Director/Screenplay

Producer

Bettina Brokemper

Photography

Reinhold Vorschneider

Editor

Bettina Böhler

Production designer

Sylvester Koziolek

Costume designer

Tabassom Charaf

Music

Terranova
,
James Blake

With

Lilith Stangenberg (Ania)
,
Georg Friedrich (Boris)
,
Silke Bodenbender (Kim)
,
Saskia Sophie Rosendahl (Jenny)
,
Frowin Wolter (Oli)

Festivals

Sundance
,
Rotterdam
,
San Francisco 2016

Elsewhere

Girl meets wolf in a startling and audacious fable from German actress-turned-director Nicolette Krebitz that is sure to provoke heated debate. Ania (an extraordinary Lilith Stagenberg) is a 20-something office drone with a creep for a boss. Outside the office, her only social interaction involves Skyping her uninterested sister and visiting her comatose grandfather in hospital. One day when walking alongside a wooded area near her apartment she locks eyes with a feral grey wolf. Without giving too much away, her encounter sparks an animalistic primitivism within her that quickly turns into an obsessive desire to hunt down and conquer the savage beast. — MM

“A walk on the wild side in the most literal sense, Wild is a wayward, confrontational, anarchic, sexually outré modern fairy tale that balances on a razor-sharp edge between the genuinely provocative and the totally out-there… Krebitz exhibits real nerve and rigorous control in equal measure as she tells a visceral tale of a young urban woman drawn to nature in a way that will shock mere tree-huggers… The one safe thing to say about the film is that there never has been anything quite like it.

Stangenberg has that exceptional quality that a few actresses exhibit from time to time… specifically, great guts and daring, and not becoming self-conscious or histrionic while laying everything on the line physically. Hollywood actors who imagine they’re bold when they step out of their comfort zones would be humbled and chastened by what they see here.” — Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Screening With This Feature

Dolfun 2015

Director

Festivals

Sundance 2016
USA
8 minutes

Filmmaker Sebastián Silva (The Maid) travels to Miami to fulfill his lifelong dream of swimming with a dolphin. Screening with Wild.