One of my all time favorites.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

"Im Winter ein Jahr" is a recent film by Caroline Link, the Academy Award winning filmmaker of "Nirgendwo in Afrika". It's based on Scott Campbell's novel. Bierbichler and Herfurth got lots of acclaim and awards recognition for their performances here and same can be said about Niki Reiser, who produced the score and Link herself. Reiser already won 5 German Film Awards for his music work, some of them for other Link projects.The story can be summarized quickly. A woman comes to an artist and orders a portrait of her daughter and her late son. The artist gets deeper and deeper in the family history as he has his painting sessions with the young woman. All the characters are pretty interesting. Herfurth's character is very straight-forward, but also very fragile and clingy when she makes a connection with somebody. During her breakup scene I was worried she might hurt herself as well, just like brother did. Then the mother has her own struggles. Obviously she had much more of a connection to her son than to her daughter and she tries her best to keep up the fake idyllic world scenario. One example would be when she lies to the artist about the reason of the son's death. The father is a successful, overly ambitious scientist who struggles with interpersonal relationships, however. It's not free of flaws. For example I was not entirely convinced about how quickly he was captivated by the family's secrets and history and got totally involved, even with his own history of lack of personal relationships. Also the dancing sequence which was supposed to work as the female main character's big moment of freeing herself of her boundaries and finding happiness did not entirely work for me. On the other hand, the last shot with the final quote was very well done. It also shows us that Herfurth's character is the center of the story and not Bierbichler's."Im Winter ein Jahr" was honored as the second best movie of the year behind "John Rabe". It's certainly not my no°2 of the year, but I agree that it is a pretty decent work and all in all I'd recommend it. It's especially worth a watch for Herfurth's performance who proved herself as one of the most attractive and talented young German actresses once again.

"A Year Ago In Winter" opens with a grieving mother commissioning a double portrait of her two children - a dance student daughter and a recently deceased son. She informs the artist that the son had died in a hunting accident - but he soon discovers it was a suicide, and also learns the daughter is hostile to the portrait project. The painter lives alone in his large studio - estranged from both his ex-wife and son, and dealing with grief of his own following the death of a close friend. The film focuses on how the relationship between the painter and the young ballerina develops from mutual antipathy, and gives them the motivation to confront the mystery of the brother's suicide.It's rare to see the life and working methods of an artist portrayed so authentically, and even more unusual to observe quality artwork integrated so organically into a film. "A Year Ago in Winter" is a subtitled human drama so it's unlikely that it'll have much mass appeal outside Germany. This is unfortunate since the film's excellent performances, cinematography and screenplay depict an unusual and intriguing relationship. Even if it remains obscure, it's still a gem.

A complex film with good performances all round, but Karoline Herfurth as Lilli (a young dance student) is quite outstanding, expressive in face and physical movements. My only criticism is her terrible diction. My German is good, but without the English subtitles I would have understood very little of what she said. The suicide of her brother left her with very mixed emotions: she loved him but at the same time was jealous of him because he was their parents' favourite. The parents, whose relationship with each other is also fraught, never ask her anything about how she feels. An elderly painter who has been asked to paint a double portrait of the siblings (her from life, him from photographs) is the only person who is interested in finding out what she felt about her brother - and that is initially only so that he can get some idea of how to portray them. She is rebellious, vulnerable, and looking for love (in the wrong quarters). The film is very long, (two and a quarter hours?), partly because there are a couple of sub-plots which might perhaps have been cut, and the ending is also rather drawn-out, with one mawkish false note (in my view) right at the end.

Anthropologists will tell you that evolution has taught us to look for chains of cause and effect everywhere, even if they don't exist. This movie examines what happens when the chain is broken. Lilli (Karoline Herfurth), a capricious beauty and a dancer of some promise, is conducting an extremely private investigation to find out why her brother Tom committed suicide. Her search is all the more pressing as she feels Tom is trying to make contact with her across the chasm of death, perhaps to settle some unfinished business. For a long time, Lilli is getting nowhere since her mother (Corinna Harfouch) has conspired to gloss over the past and cover up her pain. She hires a painter (Josef Bierbichler) to restore the way things used to be. But the painter takes sides with Lilli. If the whole family business is beyond you, go anyway to revel in Lilli's man-eating, cock-teasing, heart-stopping ways. Signature line: "You're interesting, but your jumper sucks. Are you any use in bed?" The cast is classy and the movie is as good-looking as it is well-paced, but way too long. Cut the sentimental half hour at the end, and you've got an ace.