Johannes Maria Schmit: Neubau

"How do I want to be with others?" is the central question in this queer 'heimat' film and for its protagonist, whose dilemma is not so much about choosing between a life in the East German province or in Berlin, but rather between caring for those he loves and a new beginning in the urban community of his dreams.

Summer in the Brandenburg province. Markus is torn between his love for his grandmothers who need care and his longing for a different life in Berlin. In his daydreams, a horde of dazzling demons appear to him more and more frequently as messengers of a queer urban family of choice that will free him from his loneliness. When he falls in love with Duc, who has is is happy to live in the countryside, things get even more complicated as the boxes for his move are actually already packed.

Where do I want to live - and how? Tucké Royale, who wrote the script and plays the lead role, and director Johannes M. Schmit deal with these existential questions in their debut film from the point of view of a young queer man in the Uckermark. They answer them with a decidedly non-normative life plan in which liberation from conservative ideas of sexuality and gender affiliation are just as important as commitment and mutual care.

Their queer 'Heimat' film was developed far away from the big cities as an independent production in an artist collective that deals with ambivalent (counter-) narratives and a new kind of casualness. In January 2020, Neubau celebrated its world premiere in the feature film competition of the Max Ophüls Prize film festival. Tucké Royale received the prize for the socially relevant film for his screenplay and his performance, and Neubau was awarded Best Feature Film. From the jury's statement: "There are films that are quiet, but their effect lingers. They open up our view, simply by inviting us to look more closely."

Germany 2020, colour, 81 min. With English subtitles.

Director: Johannes Maria Schmit, screenplay: Tucké Royale. With Tucké Royale, Monika Zimmering, Jalda Rebling, Minh Duc Pham.

Johannes Maria Schmit

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. Afterwards, Schmit was engaged as in-house director at the Centraltheater in Leipzig. Since 2011 he has been working freelance in German-speaking countries and in Sweden. Together with the Swedish performance artist Iggy Malmborg he founded the duo White on White, whose work has attracted international attention. With the beginning of the artistic co-directorship Langhoff / Hillje (2013) at the Gorki Theatre, Schmit's works were also regularly seen at the Berlin theatre. In February 2017 he won the Leipzig Movement Art Prize together with the Danish artist Inga Gerner Nielsen. In recent years he has often worked with the author Tucké Royale, with whom he also collaborated on his first feature film Neubau (2020), for which Royale wrote the screen play and took on the lead role. Since 2019 Schmit has been a doctoral student at the Stockholm University of Art / Uniarts and is working on a dissertation on the topic »Situating the director in a theatre of the future«.

Source: ruakooperative.de, Wikipedia

Tucké Royale

The author and performer Tucké Royale was born in Quedlinburg in 1984. From 2006 to 2011, Royale studied contemporary puppetry at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. After researching performance art in New York, he completed his diploma with his first solo performance, Tucké Royale. The performance was performed in St. Petersburg and many other cities and was nominated for the Guest Award/ Best International Act in Amsterdam. Royale has been a member of Hans Unstern's band since 2012 and is a ghostwriter for the poetry book Hanky ​​Panky Know How (Merve Verlag). He toured with The Great Hans Unstern Swindle and was responsible for the PR campaign. His second solo performance I bite my tongue and eat the toppings my raven parents left me for breakfast was created in 2013 and was shown in Studio Я of the Maxim Gorki Theater. With the performance collective Talking Straight, Royale developed the productions Europe – Garden of Delights, Aussöhnen mit Deutschland II and the Talking Straight Festival, which was awarded the Berliner Festspiele Authors’ Prize in 2015. Since 2015, Royale has been the first speaker for the inauguration he initiated of the CENTRAL [COUNCIL OF ASOCIALS IN GERMANY] (Cooperation Studio Я, Kampnagel), In addition to other theatre projects, Royale wrote the script for the feature film Neubau (2020), directed by Johannes Maria Schmit, which received an award at the Max Ophüls Festival and in which he also played the leading role.

Host or Publisher Goethe-Institut London