Goebbels and the Führer review – private life of propagandist shows grotesque heart of Nazism

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Joachim Lang’s bleak film shows a preening Goebbels and a careworn Hitler as they battle to convince the German public, and themselves, they will win the war In an appropriate spirit of cynicism and bleakness, German director Joachim Lang has made a film about the private life of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the Hexenmeister or chief sorcerer of lies, and his always strained relationship with Hitler. Robert Stadlober plays the preening and self-pitying Goebbels and Fritz Karl is a careworn Hitler. Franziska Weisz plays Goebbels’s wife Magda, who at first resented his infidelities with showbusiness starlets but for the sake of the Fatherland submitted to the public image of a good Nazi wife and mother of six adorable children – whom Joseph and Magda finally murdered in the bunker before killing themselves. In its subversive, austerely satirical way, the film feels almost like a B-side to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall from 2004, and Lang has perhaps even inhaled, just a little,...
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Nightmare review – atmospheric property horror treads line between dreams and reality

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A young woman is tormented in her sleep in this crepuscular debut feature from Norwegian writer-director Kjersti Helen Rasmussen

If there is one place you would have thought a sleep-deprived person might be able to stop herself dropping off, it’s in a lecture about sleep. But that’s what this atmospheric but somewhat heavy-handed debut feature from Norway has its protagonist Mona (Eili Harboe) do as she is introduced by dishevelled academic Aksel (Dennis Storhøi) to the possibility that she has become the victim of the mythical incubus Mare. This may explain a recent run of freakish dreams in which she’s tormented by a vampiric doppelganger of her caring boyfriend Robby (Herman Tømmeraas).

Nightmare also belongs to the school of property horror already occupied by The Tenant and Mother! Left alone by Robby, a high-flyer preoccupied with some kind of algorithmic investment venture, Mona is charged with renovating their sprawling new apartment which they acquired on the cheap after its previous occupant, who was pregnant, died in a mysterious accident. Their neighbours, who have a newborn baby and are prone to staring eerily across the courtyard, seem to have issues, too. But none of this rings any alarm bells until Mona – vaguely thinking about having kids with Robby – begins sleepwalking.

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