SILVER

[FABIAN ODER DER GANG VOR DIE HUNDE]
Maverick German auteur Dominik Graf adapts this 1931 Weimar-era novel by Erich Kästner (best known for his children's classic "Emil and the Detectives") into a freewheeling, stylistically dynamic screen imagining that self-consciously plants one foot in the Berlin of today and the other in the darkening twilight era of the early '30s. World War I vet Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling) puts his literary aspirations on hold to work writing advertising copy for a cigarette manufacturer, all the while carousing at night through the city's demi-monde with his wealthy academic pal Labude (Albrecht Schuch). But after Fabian meets and falls in love with Cornelia (Saskia Rosendahl) — cabaret bartender by night, law student by day and aspiring film actress — the promise of a better life seems possible. But Fabian and Cornelia's fates are moving in different directions, and in a world full of financial chaos and desperate compromises, romantic calamity is hard to avoid. DIR/SCR Dominik Graf; SCR Constantin Lieb, from the novel by Erich Kästner; PROD Felix von Boehm. Germany, 2021, color, 176 min. In German with English subtitles. NOT RATED

No AFI Member passes accepted.