Men show Movies & Women their Breasts
Director: Isabell Šuba
Germany, 2014, 80 min., Color, German with English subtitles
Logline:
Isabell Suba, ambitious up-and-coming director, has made it – one of her short films is in the line-up of the most important film festival of the world!
Synopsis
Synopsis
Isabell Suba, ambitious up-and-coming director, has made it – one of her short films is in the line-up of the most important film festival of the world!
When she arrives at the 65. Cannes film festival, she has face the accomplished facts: David, her incompetent producer, has kindly sublet their cosy joint apartment to other festival guests. The other bad news: There is not a single movie in the competition directed by a woman! This affirms Isabell’s qualms: The film business demands women to gear up instead of dressing up low cut! Moreover, the chauvinistic remarks of her comrade-in-arms David who feels comfortable around the clichéd gender stereotypes from the Stone Age seemingly prevalent in Cannes infuriate Isabell. As if this wasn’t enough already, a shattering feedback on her new film project by a potential investor finally causes her to doubt herself. Before she can live her dream up at the Olympus of film business, she must first find out who really believes in her.
This movie is an experiment with reality. In 2012 the “real” director Isabell Šuba transformed her invitation to the 65th Festival de Cannes into her latest filmproject. During the whole course of the festival she gave her identity to actress Anne Haug and enrolled herself as film student Anne Woelky. “Men show movies and women their breasts” was shot in five days without any fees. It is supposed to point the way for equality of opportunities for men and women in the movie industry, for female role models which need to be established alongside men. But how is that supposed to work out when German funding goes almost always to male film makers? It’s time for change,, for new women à la Isabell Šuba: talented. self-confident, fierce.
Credits
Cast and Crew
CAST
Anne Haug
Matthias Weidenhöfer
Eva Bay
CREW
SCRIPT: Isabell Šuba, Lisa Glock
DIRECTOR: Isabell Šuba
DOP: Johannes Louis
EDITING: Clemens Walter
SOUND: Tina Laschke
MIX: Michael Thumm, Bettina BertokPress
Press
Caustic comedies about the internal politics of the movie business tend to be made by jaded elder statesmen who have been through the Hollywood machine, as in Robert Altman’s The Player or Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened. But this satirical docu-fiction from the young German writer-director Isabell Šuba offers a more refreshing outsider’s perspective, lampooning both the narcissism of aspiring film-makers and the pomposity of the power brokers who decide their fate.
Shot guerrilla-style in just five days at the rain-soaked Cannes film festival, Šuba’s low-budget feature inevitably feels a little raw. But its subject matter should ensure further festival bookings, especially those with interest in LGBT and feminist themes. While commercial prospects will be slender, the prickly in-joke humor may appeal to niche distributors and Europhile cineastes overseas.
In an inspired piece of lateral thinking, Šuba conceived her debut feature following an invitation to screen her short film Chica XX Mujer in Cannes in 2012. First she cast an actor to impersonate her at the festival, with Anne Haug not only taking her Cannes pass but also attending screenings and conducting interviews in character. Sharing cramped accommodation outside town, the fictionalized Isabell and her inept producer David (Šuba’s real-life co-producer Matthias Weidenhöfer) bicker like an old married couple as they miss meetings, gatecrash parties, pitch projects to potential funders and hook up with ex-lovers. Self-referential documentary blurs into semi-improvised drama.
For anyone who has ever attended Cannes on a tight budget, Šuba’s film will be a painfully accurate reminder of the panicky desperation and pushy careerism that lies behind the razzle-dazzle surface glamor. But beyond that narrow audience demographic, Men Show Movies and Women Their Breasts is a well-observed behind-the-scenes satire with a playfully deadpan tone akin to TV comedies such as Extras or Curb Your Enthusiasm. Among the film’s pleasures are its dreamy piano score, its non-fiction cameos by passing celebrities and festival freaks, and its punchy close-up shots of Isabell and David grooming themselves before heading out to fight for their careers.
Less impressively, Šuba’s freewheeling micro-budget comedy feels like a scrappy home movie in places. It also never quite delivers the feminist sting implicit in its title, since critique of movie industry sexism is only a minor part of the comic mix, and there are arguably more unsympathetic females than males among the tight cast of characters. A sharper focus and some bigger targets might have elevated Men Show Movies and Women Their Breasts from enjoyable DIY experiment to heavy-hitting satire. Then again, as a disdainful TV executive says in one of the film’s most brutal pitching scenes, “a good title is half the battle.”
Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
Biography
Biography
ISABELL ŠUBA was born in 1981 in Berlin. She studied Media Arts Design in Berlin and Directing at the “Konrad Wolf” University of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Her films include the shorts KREUZBERG 2005 (2005), TALLULAH UND KILLERHEAD (2009), CHICA XX MUJER (2011), her graduation film JETZT ABER BALLETT (2011), and MEN SHOW MOVIES & WOMEN THEIR BREASTS (2013).
Festivals
Awards
2014, Max Ophüls Preis - Best socially relevant film
2014, Max Ophüls Preis - Pupils Jury Awards
Festivals
Zurich Film Festival, 2013
Zurich Film Festival, 2013
Internationale Hofer Filmtage, 2013
Torino Film Festival, 2013
Max-Ophüls-Preis, 2014
achtung berlin - new berlin film festival, 2014
Kitzbühel Film Festival, 2014
Queersicht Filmfestival, 2014
Portland German Film Festival, 2015
Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taiwan, 2015
German Film Festival Singapore, 2015
FILMZ - Festival des deutschen Kinos, 2015
China Women's Film Festival, 2016
Brussels Women's Film Festival, 2018