''Behind Locked Doors'' () is a feature film by Swiss/German director Anka Schmid from 1991. The ensemble-film shows the everyday life of 17 inhabitants of an apartment building in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Berlin-Mitte, Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in ...

Plot

At first glance the seventeen inhabitants of the old apartment building in Berlin Kreuzberg do not seem to have much in common other than their address. But nonetheless, when the old photographer Mr. Kempinski invites his neighbors to his 80th birthday party, they are all strangely familiar. There is 60 year old Hannelore who dreams about distant countries and who currently shares her apartment with her lovesick niece, there is student Bona from the Ivory Coast who teaches French in the kitchen while his gay roommate enjoys life and love; the two adolescent sisters with their mother who has fallen in love recently, the middle aged married janitors and then there is the young couple whose daughter prefers sitting in the stairwell to going to school.

Festivals and awards

''Behind Locked Doors'' won Anka Schmid the Swiss ''Nachwuchspreis'' for up and coming film makers. The movie also won the Film Award of

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

as well as the 2nd award of the Film Festival Schwerin.

Further festivals

Chicago International Film Festival The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...

, Film Festival Saarbrücken/Max-Ophüls Award, Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival,

Bergamo Film Meeting Bergamo Film Meeting is a film festival held every March in Bergamo, Lombardy. The festival was founded by Sandro Zambetti and Angelo Signorelli in 1983. As of 2023, it has an annual attendance of 70000 and offers more than 150 screenings in its ...

,Bergamo Film Meeting
program Warsaw International Film Festival, Créteil International Women's Film Festival

References

External links

* * (in German) 1991 films Films set in Berlin German drama films 1990s German-language films Swiss drama films 1991 LGBTQ-related films 1990s LGBTQ-related drama films 1990s German films German LGBTQ-related films {{LGBT-film-stub