Gondola

Veit Helmer’s romantic gondola rendezvous is a declaration of love for cinema, for creativity—and for love itself! An old cable car connects a village in the Georgian mountains with a small town in the valley. When the old conductor dies, his young daughter Iva (Mathilde Irrmann) returns to take over his position. She meets her colleague Nino (Nini Soselia), who is about the same age and has been working there for some time, and who teaches her the tricks of operating the cable car. When Iva’s gondola goes up, Nino’s goes down—and then vice versa. For days on end, the two see each other halfway up the route. What starts as friendly greetings gradually turns into teasing. And teasing turns into flirting... Iva and Nino transform their gondolas into crazy flying machines to impress each other—much to the annoyance of their bitter and jealous boss. On the night Iva and Nino have a romantic date in the gondola, he decides to put an end to their antics... "Veit Helmer is one of the few radical stylists in German cinema today who can still make his films exactly as he wants. He is not interested in a realistic depiction of the world, but instead creates poetic fantasy worlds in his films, which he populates with his archetypal characters. They are usually set in Eastern countries, whose exotic locations he transforms into stages for his fairy-tale-like narratives. [...] Veit Helmer tells this story using purely cinematic means—he dispenses with dialogue entirely (not a single word is spoken in the entire film). Instead, he relies entirely on the power of his images, and one cannot help but admire his ingenuity and originality. [...] With GONDOLA, Veit Helmer has created a cinematic love ballad that enchants the audience without ever coming across as sentimental." (Jury statement, FBW – rating: “particularly valuable”)