Victoria

Sebastian Schipper’s exhilarating heist thriller is stunt filmmaking of a very high order.

There’s a new one-shot wonder in town Sebastian Schipper’s heart-in-mouth heist thriller “Victoria” isn’t performing any high-tech sleight of hand. Genuinely shot across 22 locations in a single bobbing, weaving, 134-minute take, this exhilarating tale of a winsome Spanish nightclubber who finds herself spontaneously caught up in a bank robbery during one wild night on the Berlin tiles is undeniably a stunt, but one suffused with a surprising degree of grace and emotional authenticity.

With its very opening image, Schipper’s film makes an unsubtle but effective grab for viewers’ attention, as the dizzying white scintillation of a dance-floor strobe light envelops the frame. Photosensitive epileptics should consider themselves warned, but it’s “Victoria” itself that, after a fashion, enters a state of seizure from this point, its impulses and reflexes in hot, compelling, irrational disarray. Rather like its in-over-her-head heroine, the narrative swerves from a state of composed realism to one of high-stakes, head-spinning absurdity with nary a moment to breathe or ponder its actions.

World Premier at Berlinale 2015

Article by Guy Lodge in Film Critic

Production

(Germany) A Match Factory presentation of a Monkeyboy production in co-production with Deutschfilm and Radicalmedia in association with WDR, Arte. (International sales: the Match Factory, Cologne, Germany.) Produced by  Anatol Nitschke, Catherine Baikousis, David Keitsch. Co-producers, Barbara Buhl, Andreas Schreitmueller.

Crew

Directed by Sebastian Schipper. Screenplay, Schipper, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Eike Frederick Schulz. Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Sturla Brandth Grovlen; music, Nils Frahm; production designer, Uli Friedrichs; costume designer, Stefanie Jauss; sound, Magnus Pfluger; supervising sound editor, Fabian Schmidt; re-recording mixer, Matthias Lempert; assistant director, Ires Jung; second unit director, Eike Frederick Schulz; second unit camera, Philip Fleischer, Andrej Gontscharov; casting, Suse Marquardt, Lucie Lenox, Iris Mueller.

With

Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit, Max Mauff, Andre M. Hennicke, Anna Lena Klenke, Philipp Kubitza, Eike Frederick Schulz, Hans Ulrich Laux. (English, German dialogue)

Editor: Olivia Neergaard-Holm
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Produced by Jan Dressler

One Shot

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Most seen at Berlinale 2015
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