#Kino

In L’état et moi, Max Linz invents a composer named Hans List, who fought on the barricades of the Paris Commune in 1871 and now wakes up to a new life in the present, moving through Berlin-Mitte sans papiers. His composition “Les Misérables“ is being rehearsed at the State Opera, which he appears in incognito as an extra. Sophie Rois plays two roles in the film, that of List and that of his nemesis, judge Praetorius-Camusot. Completing the ensemble are an awkward legal intern (Jeremy Mockridge), a grumpy museum guard (Kerstin Grassmann), and two authoritarian personalities.
Linz and his ensemble pull all triggers of comedy: puns on names, wordplay, mistaken identities, stylistic inconsistencies and slapstick especially. Linz’ faible for chains of unlikely coincidence is not to be missed. But beneath all the screen-filling nonsense, things get serious: how are class issues and cultural production connected? What is to be made of soft power cultural diplomacy? And to what tradition do the police and the judiciary belong in Germany? The film deals with all this and more. As Sophie Rois sings tenderly: “I may have failed, but red won’t be derailed.”

(Source: Berlinale)