“I’m on my way back to L.A. from Telluride, and without question the biggest find of the fest was The Lives Of Others, a German-made from first-time director Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck, who worked six years on the film and it now being courted by all the agencies,” a friend wrote early this evening.
“Sony Pictures Classics picked it up last May, and it’s set for a February ’07 release. This should be the German Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, from which a nomination is all but assured, and perhaps even the Oscar itself.
“The story’s basically about the last days of Stasi, the diseased East German Secret Police, as things were falling apart in ’89. It’s about a Stasi agent (Ulrich Muhe) eavesdropping on a playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his actress wife (Martina Gedeck), and the stuff that comes to the surface when they begin to intreract.
“Philip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire also was getting good buzz on the street and many were calling Mira Nair‘s The Namesake her best ever (although I missed it).