Audi Festival of German Films

Overview

Now in it's ninth year, the Audi Festival of German Films returns to Sydney with 30 features to thoroughly sate your Deutsch-longing while you wait for Oktoberfest to roll around again. Ever more successful each year (last year's drew record crowds), the festival is the kind of two-week event where one really needs to go through the guide with a highlighter (preferably orange). You'll be thankful, then, that the program is split into five threads for easy location: Berlin Based, German Currents, Culinary Comedies and films by Fatih Akin and Sonke Wortmann.

Highlights of Berlin Based include the three-part miniseries (originally made for TV) The Wolves of Berlin, which follows a group of teenagers in 1948 over the next 50 years, focusing on the years 1948, 1961 and 1989, all times of upheaval. Another is the new film starring Mads Mikkelsen (also appearing in Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky at cinemas now), The Door, the kind of film that comes with a "don't read too much before you see it" synopsis.

In the German Currents section, there's My Words, My Lies for lovers, The Crocodiles for families and The Day Will Come for revolutionaries/terrorists. Also in this section is Michael Haneke's 2009 Cannes Palme d'Or winning beauty The White Ribbon.

For those that like to mix food and film, Culinary Comedies boasts Kebab Connection and Tandoori Love, the first European Bollywood production. And then, for the completists, there is curatorial devotion to the films of Fatih Akin and Sonke Wortmann, the latter featuring Pope Joan starring Johanna Wakalek (Baader Meinhof Complex), John Goodman and David Wenham in a film about a woman who disguises herself as a man in the ninth century to rise through the Catholic Ranks (that old chestnut).

To win one of six double passes to the festival just visit our Facebook page, click 'Suggest to Friends' and tell your mates about Concrete Playground, then confirm your entry on our wall.