Miraculi

(Miraculi)

Germany, 1991, 113 min, color

In German; English subtitles

Miraculi © DEFA-Stiftung, Jörg Erkens

Credits:

Director
Weiß, Ulrich

Script
Weiß, Ulrich

Dramaturg
Trampe, Tamara

Editor
Carow, Evelyn

Camera
Feindt, Johann
Geick, Eberhard

Set Design
Paschkowski, Solvejg

Costume Design
Bergemann, Werner

Music (Score)
Rabenalt, Peter

Cast
Burza, Eduard
Dittus, Barbara
Dommisch, Peter
Gregorek, Karin
Hartmann, Sebastian
Hennicke, André
Kockisch, Uwe
Krumbiegel, Ulrike
Lubosch, Ute
Manchen, Klaus
Minetti, Hans-Peter
Ranisch, Volker
Reichel, Käthe
Vogt, Katrin
Waligura, Kathrin

Themes & Genres:

Synopsis

A group of young people draws straws to see who’ll steal some cigarettes. With this theft, Sebastian (Volker Ranisch) starts a bizarre, symbolic odyssey through a sclerotic world, in search of himself and of truth and justice. When he tries withdrawing from one social paradigm, he finds himself caught in another.

This political-allegoric film is part of the series WENDE FLICKS: Last Films from East Germany.

Commentary

The fall of the Wall made it possible for director Ulrich Weiß (Your Unknown Brother) to finally make a film again. In this work he blends two long-cherished projects, one of which he had worked on for over ten years, but was refused by the East German film studio.

Miraculi also includes a cameo by the outstanding Brechtian actor Käthe Reichel, one of the co-organizers of the November 4, 1989, demonstration for freedom and democracy in East Berlin.

Awards

1992	Second Prize, Schwerin Film Art Festival
1992	Official Selection, Berlin International Film Festival

Press comments

"Director Ulrich Weiß was the greatest talent to emerge from the Babelsberg film school in the 1970s."
—The Oxford History of World Cinema

“These images of a universal uncertainty represent the shattering of a familiar world. It is one of the most important and deepest films of the Wende period. But more than anything, it is the most mysterious one.”

— Erika Richter, film historian

“This quixotic movie is dominated by political allegory.”
— The New York Times

“Ulrich Weiß is an artist who stimulates thought, whose world consists of ideas and images and who, for this reason, has remained an underestimated outsider.”
— film-zeit.de