If there is anything that horror nerds know, it’s that you can’t always trust kids. Sure, they might seem cute, and some of them are even innocent. But in other cases, the minute your back is turned, they become a Damien or an Esther or a Rhoda. From Katrin Gebbe (Nothing Bad Can Happen) comes a film that offers a fascinating and touching spin on the evil kid subgenre.
Wiebke (Nina Hoss) is a single mother, raising her daughter Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo) and training horses in the German countryside. Her work informs her general outlook on the world—it takes time, dedication, and above all, patience. True connection comes through trust and through communication. It’s a concept that she puts to use every day, in every aspect of her life.
When she decides to adopt a second child, she knows that the young girl named Raya...
Wiebke (Nina Hoss) is a single mother, raising her daughter Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo) and training horses in the German countryside. Her work informs her general outlook on the world—it takes time, dedication, and above all, patience. True connection comes through trust and through communication. It’s a concept that she puts to use every day, in every aspect of her life.
When she decides to adopt a second child, she knows that the young girl named Raya...
- 9/30/2019
- by Emily von Seele
- DailyDead
Writer/director Katrin Gebbe is not messing around with her latest film Pelican Blood. What starts as a psychological drama about a mother desperate to provide her new daughter the love necessary to free her from the demons of a traumatic past gradually escalates into a supernatural thriller augmenting what science attempts to prove. So while the explanation of a piece of artwork depicting a pelican that pierced its chest to reanimate its dead children with its blood first appears as metaphor, it just might be transformed into a darkly hopeful reality of rebirth. The film is ultimately about a mother’s love refusing to falter after the world has told her enough is enough. When everyone gives up on young Raya (Katerina Lipovska), Wiebke (Nina Hoss) remains stalwart.
Is it strength that keeps her by the girl’s side after everything that happens or irrationality, though? Most gave her...
Is it strength that keeps her by the girl’s side after everything that happens or irrationality, though? Most gave her...
- 9/19/2019
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
If someone decided to make a documentary about those mothers who go on Dr. Phil to talk about how their young child is trying to stab them in their sleep, it would probably look something like Katrin Gebbe’s Pelican Blood. It’s an incredibly effective drama about how children’s actions have powerful effects on a family, about a mother’s resilience, and the desperate lengths she goes through to save her family.
The German-language film follows Wiebke (Nina Hoss), a single mother who owns a horse training facility for riot police. She has an adopted daughter, Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Ocleppo), and the film’s first half highlights Wiebke’s desire and success in adopting another little girl, Raya (Katerina Lipovska). Both of her little girls bond quickly, and they seem to be the perfect family, but it’s clear that there’s something wrong. Darkness follows Raya, as indicated...
The German-language film follows Wiebke (Nina Hoss), a single mother who owns a horse training facility for riot police. She has an adopted daughter, Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Ocleppo), and the film’s first half highlights Wiebke’s desire and success in adopting another little girl, Raya (Katerina Lipovska). Both of her little girls bond quickly, and they seem to be the perfect family, but it’s clear that there’s something wrong. Darkness follows Raya, as indicated...
- 9/17/2019
- by Sara Clements
- DailyDead
Chris Feil takes a look at two performances by one of the greatest German actresses...
Katrin Gebbe follows her relentlessly grim Nothing Bad Can Happen with another slow-building horror-adjacent character study with Pelican Blood, a portrait of motherly conviction that love isn’t enough and hope is toxic. Nina Hoss is Wiebke, a skilled horse trainer and mother bringing a second adoptive daughter Raya (Katerina Lipovska) to her ranch. Shy at first, Raya quickly establishes herself as deeply troubled and a threat to her older daughter Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo). Misbehaving turns ominous, with Wiebke determined to show Raya the love she has been denied even as something evil within destroys Wiebke’s life...
Katrin Gebbe follows her relentlessly grim Nothing Bad Can Happen with another slow-building horror-adjacent character study with Pelican Blood, a portrait of motherly conviction that love isn’t enough and hope is toxic. Nina Hoss is Wiebke, a skilled horse trainer and mother bringing a second adoptive daughter Raya (Katerina Lipovska) to her ranch. Shy at first, Raya quickly establishes herself as deeply troubled and a threat to her older daughter Nicolina (Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo). Misbehaving turns ominous, with Wiebke determined to show Raya the love she has been denied even as something evil within destroys Wiebke’s life...
- 9/9/2019
- by Chris Feil
- FilmExperience
Like most great actors, Nina Hoss has the gift of bringing innate credibility to writing not necessarily blessed with the same virtue: When a character’s choices make little sense, or their backstory seems incompletely shaded, she can play these flaws as messy human glitches rather than conceptual gaps. That ability counts for a lot in “Pelican Blood,” a handsome, initially intriguing twist on the old “bad seed” horror premise from genre-mixing German writer-director Katrin Gebbe. As a single mother trying every available route to avoid giving up on (or simply giving up) the seemingly psychotic five-year-old girl she has recently adopted, Hoss’s teeth-gritted commitment to the role keeps us on side through more questionable stages of maternal meltdown than many a talented thesp would manage.
But to look a gift Hoss in the mouth for a moment, the star’s best efforts can’t prevent “Pelican Blood” from...
But to look a gift Hoss in the mouth for a moment, the star’s best efforts can’t prevent “Pelican Blood” from...
- 8/28/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Pelican Blood (Pelikanblut)
Personal sacrifice is again the central theme in the sophomore film from Germany’s Katrin Gebbe, who nabs Nina Hoss as the lead in Pelican Blood. Joining Gebbe again is producer Verena Graft-Hoft of Junafilm, working in conjunction with Bulgaria’s Mila Voinikova of Miramar Film and Swr/Arte. Joining Hoss in the cast of this dark family drama are Murathan Muslu, Sophie Pfenningstorf, Justine Hirschfeld, Yana Marinova, Dimitar Banenkin, Sebastian Rudolph, Katerina Lipovska and Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo. Lensing the film is Dp Moritz Schultheiß. Gebbe’s incredibly divisive debut, Nothing Bad Can Happen (read review), which concerned martyrdom and religious fanaticism in modern day Hamburg, premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.…...
Personal sacrifice is again the central theme in the sophomore film from Germany’s Katrin Gebbe, who nabs Nina Hoss as the lead in Pelican Blood. Joining Gebbe again is producer Verena Graft-Hoft of Junafilm, working in conjunction with Bulgaria’s Mila Voinikova of Miramar Film and Swr/Arte. Joining Hoss in the cast of this dark family drama are Murathan Muslu, Sophie Pfenningstorf, Justine Hirschfeld, Yana Marinova, Dimitar Banenkin, Sebastian Rudolph, Katerina Lipovska and Adelia-Constance Giovanni Ocleppo. Lensing the film is Dp Moritz Schultheiß. Gebbe’s incredibly divisive debut, Nothing Bad Can Happen (read review), which concerned martyrdom and religious fanaticism in modern day Hamburg, premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.…...
- 1/4/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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