Mein 20. Jahrhundert

My 20th Century

In 1879, as Thomas Alva Edison was lighting up Menlo Park with his first demonstration of the incandescent light bulb, far away in Europe, a dark and joyless childhood was beginning for identical twins Dora and Lili in Budapest. Orphaned and separated as young girls by a quirk of fate, their lives take very different directions. Dora becomes a successful con woman, while Lili joins a group of anarchist revolutionaries. Unknown to each other, their paths cross again briefly on New Year’s Eve in 1899 on the Orient Express. They will ultimately be linked by Z, a cosmopolitan gentlemen who has no idea that he is actually wooing two woman, not one …This first feature by director Ildikó Enyedi, who won the Golden Bear at the 2017 Berlinale for "Testről és lélekről" ("On Body and Soul"), is a bit like a puzzle. It presents the audience with a romantic love story, a poetic fairy tale, an erotic riddle – and at the same time, an inventory of new technology – electricity, the telegraph, film. Conceived as an homage to silent movies and shot in black-and-white, "Az én XX. századom" references many silent film techniques and tricks.

Source: 68. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)