Jan-Ole Gerster's multilayered thriller ISLANDS has just been nominated in four categories for the German Film Award! The film will compete for the Best Film Lola on May 9th, with lead actor Sam Riley nominated for Best Actor and composer Dascha Dauenhauer for Best Film Score. A fourth nomination was also received in the category of Best Sound Design.
The film celebrated its world premiere as a Berlinale Special Gala at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Tom (Sam Riley) works as a tennis coach in an all-inclusive hotel on Fuerteventura. What at first glance appears to be the dream of endless summer has long since become a monotonous routine for the former professional. While the tourists come and go in an endless stream, he plays hundreds of balls over the net week after week and fills the void with fleeting affairs and alcohol. But then the mysterious Anne (Stacy Martin) shows up at the hotel. She, her husband Dave (Jack Farthing) and their seven-year-old son Anton (Dylan Torrell) do not fit the image of the typical package tourists. Tom quickly gets closer to the family: He gives Anton tennis lessons and invites them on an excursion to show them the rugged beauty of the island. The next day, Dave disappears without a trace. As mysterious as Dave’s disappearance is Anne’s behavior, which leaves Tom puzzled. A suspicion begins to grow in him...
Jan-Ole Gerster (OH BOY, LARA) directs ISLANDS, a multilayered thriller under the glaring sun of Fuerteventura. At the center of it all is the great Sam Riley (CONTROL, CRANKO) as tennis instructor Tom, who is torn out of a monotonous everyday life of supposed freedom and carefree. Alongside him, Stacy Martin (NYMPHOMANIAC, THE BRUTALIST) captivates as the enigmatic femme fatale entangled in contradictions, and Jack Farthing (RIOT CLUB, RAIN DOGS) as a husband who envies Tom’s freedom and sets the events in motion with his disappearance. In his third feature film, the German Film Award winner plays with classic film noir elements and tells a multilayered thriller about the longing for the life of the other.
The screenplay for this hypnotic thriller was written by Jan-Ole Gerster, Blaz Kutin and Lawrie Doran. Juan Sarmiento G. (AMPARO, nominated for the Camera d'Or) is responsible for the cinematography, the award-winning Cora Pratz (I'M YOUR MAN, THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER) for the production design, and Christian Röhrs (THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE) for the costume design. The sound recordings were done by Stefan Soltau (BABYLON BERLIN) and the extraordinary score is by composer Dascha Dauenhauer, who was awarded the German Film Award for BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ.
ISLANDS is a production of augenschein Filmproduktion (Maximilian Leo, Jonas Katzenstein) in co-production with LEONINE Studios and Schiwago Film. The film was funded by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the German Federal Film Board (FFA), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM).
