Die Mittagsfrau
('Blind at Heart')
Helene arrives in the wild Berlin of the 1920s with her sister Martha. Whilst Martha loses herself in a frenzy of partying and drugs, Helene wants to study medicine. She finds the love of her life in Karl. The door to the world seems wide open. After Karl's sudden death and the cataclysmic societal changes wrought by the Nazis, she meets Wilhelm, who falls violently in love with her. However, her vitality and her strong will are at odds with Wilhelm's traditional view of the gender roles and motherhood. Helene makes an outrageous decision. Barbara Albert's film adaptation of Julia Franck's celebrated international bestseller The Blind Side of the Heart, which won the German Book Prize, is the moving portrait of a young woman in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s, and her struggles with her identity and role as a wife and mother. The result is an epic film that talks about profound emotions in a very modern way; a stirring homage to feminine physicality and self-empowerment. Mala Emde gives a fascinating and sensitive performance in the role of Helene.
After the screening, Mala Emde, Barbara Albert, Julia Franck and the producer Oliver Schündler talk to Petra Gute about the film.
Julia Franck was born in Berlin in 1970, and studied Native American History, Philosophy and Contemporary German Literature. Since 1997, she has published numerous books, including Liebediener and Bauchlandung. She won a residency at the German Academy's Villa Massimo in Rome in 2005. In 2007, she was awarded the German Book Prize for The Blind Side of the Heart. The novel has been translated into 40 languages. Her most recent publication after Back to Back (2011) was the novel Welten auseinander. In 2022, she won the Schiller Memorial Prize for her body of work.
Barbara Albert was born in Vienna in 1970, and studied directing and screenwriting at Filmakademie Wien. Her first feature-length film Northern Skirts (1999) won an award at the Venice Film Festival. She is one of the co-founders of the film production company coop99, and has been jointly responsible for films such as The Edukators, Lourdes, The Wall and Toni Erdmann. After successfully directing Free Radicals, The Dead and the Living (2012) and Mademoiselle Paradis, to name but a few, she has now realised her sixth cinema film with The Blind Side of the Heart. From 2013 to 2023, she was the Professor for Directing at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, and has since then held the same position at Filmakademie Wien.
Mala Emde, born in 1996, already stood in front of the camera whilst still at school, and became known to a wider audience in My Daughter, Anne Frank. Important roles followed, for example in Luther and I, in Brecht by Heinrich Breloer or in the TV series Charité. After graduating from the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art, she joined the Theater Basel ensemble in 2021. She has starred in films such as And Tomorrow the Entire World and Skin Deep, which were successful at the Venice Film Festival and at the box office. She currently stars as Helene Seternberg, the title character, in the TV series Oh Hell.
Oliver Schündler, born in 1966, initially worked as a film and theatre dramaturg before becoming a producer for Bavaria Film in 1995, where he was subsequently responsible for international co-productions from 2001 onwards. In 2008, he founded his own film production company, Lucky Bird Pictures, whose sole CEO he has been since 2012. His most important productions to date are the comedy Verdammtes Glück for the German TV channel ZDF, the thriller Der Tod in Deinen Augen starring Thomas Kretschmann, the three-part miniseries Antonia, the film adaptation of Henning Mankell The Chinese Man and the films Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails and 13 Minutes, which he co-produced. He is currently working on a science fiction TV series with the working title Mars – You Will Never Come Back. He produced The Blind Side of the Heart together with his colleague Boris Ausserer.
The journalist Petra Gute is a Berlin-based radio reporter and presenter; she has been with the radio station Sender Freies Berlin since 1991. In 1995, she also began to work in the TV area as a reporter, presenter and author. Since then, she has also authored and presented various programmes and documentaries for the TV channel ARD. From 2007 to 2018, she presented the rbb's culture magazine Stilbruch on TV. In front of the camera, she now mainly works as a live news reporter for the rbb's Abendschau programme. As a presenter, she fronts special programmes such as the ARD Europakonzert or the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's traditional concert at the Waldbühne in Berlin.
