Our German inspired World Cinema season continues this week with Jew Suss: Rise and Fall (Tuesday 18^th September, 8.30pm).

Our German inspired World Cinema Season continues this week with Jew Suss: Rise and Fall (Tuesday 18^th September, 8.30pm).

Directed by German director Oskar Roehler, Jew Suss premiered at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. It tells the story of Ferdinand Marian (Tobias Moretti), the lead actor in the Nazi’s most famous anti-Semitic propaganda film, Jud Suss.

Jud Suss was to be the centerpiece in Joseph Goebbels campaign against the Jews, and Marian’s dream of being a household name was realised when over 20 million people in Europe paid to see the film. What he wasn’t prepared for was the impact this film would have, how it would drive the Holocaust, and the personal toll it would take on his family – including his wife who was a quarter Jewish.

There are some serious issues at play - the combination of art and politics, the manipulation of the German people under the Nazi regime, and artistic responsibility. It’s an interesting story, although Jew Suss: Rise and Fall may feel a little underdone by Roehler’s choice to shoot in an old fashioned style with a monochrome palette and melodramatic over-acting.

Next up, Emily Watson and Oranges and Sunshine (Saturday 22^nd September, 8.30pm); A small and intense film directed by Ken Loach’s son Jim Loach, it’s well worth a look as it tells a rather remarkable story.

I’ve always got time for Emily Watson, ever since I blubbered my way through her remarkable performance in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves back in 1996. In Oranges and Sunshine she plays Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker who in 1986 uncovered the true story of an organised migration scheme illegally sending hundreds of post war children from the United Kingdom to Australia.

It’s a chilling, horrific story that reveals the government scheme which sent children as young as 4 to Australia, and how many were not the orphans they were supposed to be. These children were often subjected to hard labour and abuse at the farms and religious institutions they were sent to – and Humphreys worked tirelessly, to the detriment of her own emotional and physical health, to re-unite these “Forgotten Children” with their families.

To finish off the week – don’t miss David Lynch’s surrealistic road movie Wild at Heart (Sunday 23^rd September, 8.30pm), staring Laura Dern, Nicholas Cage and Dianne Ladd. Screening as part of our Directors' Showcase, Lynch adapted this story from the pulp novel written by Barry Gifford (Lynch and Gifford would also go on to collaborated on Lost Highway, released in 1997). It tells the story of lovers Lula Pace Fortune (Dern) and Sailor Ripley (Cage) on the run across the America from Lula’s mother (played by Dern’s real-life mother Ladd), a couple of hit-men and the police. It’s not your average road trip - but you’d expect nothing less from Mr. Lynch.

Enjoy.