Mainstreaming its cinema

For six years -- the last four as part of AFI Fest -- Made in Germany has brought to Los Angeles a selection of recent releases from a country with a rich cinema history. The six films in this year’s mini-festival are more commercial than art-house, diverging from the recent trend of German multiculturalism seen in such films as Fatih Akin’s “Head-On.” They are extremely accessible films, the type of intelligent mainstream fare Hollywood has decreasingly seemed interested in making.

Different in genre and tone, the films are united by excellent performances that elevate them with a combination of star turns and fine ensemble work in stories that include historical drama, ferocious social farce and music-inspired melodrama. Even the lone documentary features an intimate portrait of one of Germany’s best-known actors.

On the fiction front, the subtly harrowing “Sophie Scholl -- The Final Days,” is Made in Germany’s standout and is also the nation’s official submission for Academy Award consideration in the foreign language category. The heroic story of a young German woman who was part of the White Rose, an underground movement of Munich college students devoted to undermining the Third Reich’s domination of Europe, the film is exhilarating despite the inescapable bleakness of its outcome.

In an inspiring performance, Julia Jentsch (“The Edukators”) stars as Scholl, a Protestant captured with her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) in February 1943 while distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets on a university campus. Marc Rothemund’s film covers the last six days of her life as she faces down her stoic Gestapo inquisitor Robert Mohr (Alexander Held) in a tense ideological war of words.

Though the White Rose’s story has been told before -- most notably in Michael Verhoeven’s “Die Weisse Rose” and Percy Adlon’s “Funf Letzte Tage,” both 1982 -- “Sophie Scholl” uses documents of the interrogations not released until 1990. Jentsch and Held are so resolute in arguing their characters’ ideals, they make the long scenes of dialogue riveting.

“The Wedding Party,” a dark satire based on a cult comic book, pits two excessively stubborn men in a battle of escalating hostilities. Egomaniacal Hermann Walzer (Armin Rohde) wants his son Mark’s wedding to be first-rate and also desires to purchase the country inn where the reception is being held. The inn’s proprietor and chef, Franz Berger (the always delightful Uwe Ochsenknecht), despite imminent bankruptcy, is not interested in selling, setting the two men at odds before the first course is served.

When members of the wedding party find the prawn cocktail appetizers less than satisfactory, Hermann immediately ends the meal and orders his guests to leave, stiffing Franz for the multicourse meal in the process.

Unfortunately, the mother of the- groom and the bride are left behind, and they quickly become hostages as Hermann and his henchmen surround the inn with an impressive arsenal of weapons. The standoff becomes increasingly violent and ludicrous, going far beyond what might be rational as the film skewers bourgeois pretensions.

Ripe for an American remake, Dominique Deruddere’s bloody farce provides great roles for two midcareer stars looking for something a little unusual. Rohde is just right as the blustery, single-minded Hermann, and Ochsenknecht -- who can do more with a wince than many actors can with a soliloquy -- anchors the film with steely calm.

“Antibodies” owes more than a little to serial killer procedurals such as “Manhunter” and “The Silence of the Lambs” but is nonetheless a well-made psychological thriller buoyed by a strong cast and director Christian Alvart’s ability to usurp genre conventions. Wotan Wilke Mohring stars as Michael Martens, a small-town policeman and farmer haunted by the killing of a young girl, the friend of his teenage son.

Martens goes to Berlin hoping to link the murder to serial killer Gabriel Engels (Andre Hennicke), who is suspected in 14 other slayings and is apprehended in an intense opening sequence.

As Engels opens up to Martens, it becomes clear that the farmer’s real fear is that the actual killer may be someone closer to home. Heinz Hoenig -- a sort of Teutonic Brian Cox -- is particularly good as Seiler, the city detective who uses Martens for his own means.

A slice of German life is found in Andreas Dresen’s “Summer in Berlin,” which initially feels like a breezy romance but quietly evolves into something touching and more substantial. Single women Nike (Nadja Uhl) and Katrin (Inka Friedrich) are friends and neighbors in a decrepit apartment building who share the pleasures of the structure’s balcony but are unlucky in their pursuit of men.

Nike assists elderly people in their homes, cleaning, cooking and bathing them, but she becomes too emotionally involved for her own good. Katrin is a single mom struggling to find work and ignoring a potentially dangerous drinking problem. Simultaneously sexy and down-to-earth, Uhl and Friedrich are appealing as real women with real problems.

The characters are well observed by director Dresen (“Grill Point”) and screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase (“The Legend of Rita”) as the film comfortably sketches the lives of the women and the people who surround them.

Oddly jaunty for a movie about a dying woman, “Almost Heaven” is saved by a radiant performance by Heike Makatsch as Helen, a German country singer who has weeks to live but is close to realizing her dream of singing in Nashville. Defying her husband (Wotan Wilke Mohring of “Antibodies”), she impulsively boards a plane to fulfill an invitation to perform at the Tennessee city’s Bluebird Cafe.

Unfortunately for Helen, a mix-up at the airport results in her landing in Jamaica, where she is almost immediately relieved of her funds by a sassy con woman named Rosie (Nikki Amuka-Bird). A primarily English-language culture-clash directed by Ed Herzog, it’s a pleasant diversion as the women eventually bond to the strains of John Denver set to calypso drums.

Christopher Buchholz affectionately profiles his actor father in the documentary “Horst Buchholz -- My Papa.” The elder Buchholz, best known in the U.S. as one of “The Magnificent Seven,” was an international star known as the James Dean of German cinema early in his career.

Along with co-director Sandra Hacker, the younger Buchholz creates a portrait of his tight-lipped father through interviews conducted in the actor’s final years (he died in 2003 at age 69), home movies and film clips. Horst’s wife of 45 years, French actress Myriam Bru, and their daughter Simran Kaur Khalsa (born Beatrice) speak candidly about the man Bru describes as a “sacred monster.”

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Screenings

AFI Fest --

Made in Germany

* “Sophie Scholl -- The Final Days”: 7 tonight, 3:15 p.m. Saturday. Actor Eric Braeden will introduce tonight’s screening.

* “Antibodies”: 8:45 p.m. Saturday, 12:30 p.m. Monday

* “The Wedding Party”: 9 p.m. Sunday, 3:45 p.m. Monday

* “Horst Buchholz: My Papa”:

10 p.m. Monday, 3:30 p.m. Tuesday

* “Almost Heaven”: 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, 9:30 p.m. Wednesday

* “Summer in Berlin”: 6:45 p.m. next Friday, 2 p.m. Nov. 13

Where: ArcLight Cinemas, 6360 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (866) AFI-FEST, www.afi.com