And the winner is…
Klaus Maria Brandauer, who, took the lead actor prize at the German Screen Actors’ Guild awards Feb. 10, 2014, in Berlin.
Brandauer won for “Die Ausloschung” (Blank), which is a made-for-TV drama about a man struggling with Alzheimer’s and the social stigma that goes with it.
The film is part of a growing trend to films dealing with the topic of dementia. Holding On, a film made by Briton Jo Southwell about her father, was included in the 2013 Cannes film festival. Canadian Sarah Polley’s 2006 film Away From Her, about a man coping with the institutionalization of his wife because of Alzheimer’s disease, won numerous awards. Laura Linney and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman played siblings in 2007’s The Savages, a tragic comedy about adult children caring for a parent with dementia.
Blank is the story of two people, Judith Fuhrmann and the witty, charming widowed art historian Ernst Lemden (Brandauer), for whom a deep love develops, from a one-night stand to moving in together. Over time, Ernest starts showing signs of dementia. He relocats objects and forgets everyday things, such as the name of his grandson Emil.
Ernst loses his rhetorical strength over time. Where he once saw complexity in his favourite painting, Hans Burgkmair and his Wife Anna, by Luke Furtenagel (1529), he now sees only funny bone men.
Ernst must be supervised around the clock. From a happy, lively love a unilateral care situation has arisen. Judith has the responsibility for a man who is no longer able to share and has forgotten his past and his family. Nevertheless, there is a connection.
An Austrian actor, Brandauer is known for his incendiary work in Mephisto and Out of Africa, for which he won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Red Arrow Intl. is selling the TV movie.
About the author
