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Bookmark this pageFat World (1998)
Director: Jan Schütte
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A sympathetic portrait of the Munich homeless, from a novel by Helmut Krausser. Taciturn, permanently pissed but basically 'together' Hagen (Vogel, excellent) shares an abandoned urine-filled concrete building with a gallery of drifters, druggies, alkies and the emotionally vulnerable. He finds some kind of redemption through his slowly burgeoning love for a 15-year-old Berlin runaway (Filimonov), despite the intervention of the police. Keeping stylisation to a minimum (he's evidently beguiled by realist absurdity), Schütte charts a confident course between the destructive rocks of indulgent gutter poetry and mawkish care-junkie semi-documentaryism. Softer emotionally, but as intelligent and observant, this encouraging, involving drama comes close to the class of MacKinnon's The Grass Arena.Author: WH
Cast & crew
Director: Jan Schütte
Producer: Gerhard Hegele, Andreas Bareiss, Hanno Huth
Cast: Jürgen Vogel, Stefan Dietrich, Julia Filimonow, Sibylle Canonica, Lars Rudolph, Thomas Thieme, Ursula Strätz full cast
Duration: 90 mins
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