‘Somersault’ Director Shortland Returns with Toronto-Bound WWII Coming-of-Age Drama ‘Lore’ [Trailer]

Australian director Cate Shortland’s follow up to her deliriously good debut, “Somersault” (2004; trailer below), has been a long time coming. “Lore,” which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June, is now heading to Toronto. “Somersault” launched the careers of Abbie Cornish (“Bright Star,” “Limitless”) and Sam Worthington (“Avatar,” “Terminator Salvation”), and German-language WWII coming-of-age drama “Lore” is poised to do the same for newcomer Saskia Rosendahl.

You can watch the trailer below. Cinematographer Adam Arkapaw’s work (which also includes Australia’s “The Snowtown Murders,” “Animal Kingdom” and “The Hunter”) makes “Lore” look like a hybrid of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” and Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights,” with its sensual and naturalistic fascination. Music Box Films will release the film stateside.

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Synopsis:

After her Nazi parents are imprisoned, Lore leads her younger siblings across a war-torn Germany in 1945. Amidst the chaos, she encounters mysterious Jewish refugee Thomas, who shatters her fragile reality with hatred and desire. To live, she must trust someone she was taught to hate and face the darkness within herself. Starring Saskia Rosendahl and Kai Malina.

From THR‘s review:

“German-language Lore, unspooling a lyrical, deeply affecting study into a rarely seen legacy of the Holocaust,..In Somersault, Shortland’s dreamy stylings created a modest film that lingered. Lore shares that film’s ethereal palette and an arty fixation on the minutiae of nature, but the moral landmines are weightier. Told through the eyes of a teenage girl, this superbly shot German-British-Australian co-production rather controversially offers up as victims, not those subjected to barbarous anti-Semitic crimes, but the bewildered German civilians struggling in the wake of WWII to comprehend what just happened,..a preternaturally mature performance by newcomer Saskia Rosendahl,..Shot entirely in Europe,..this measured, subtly complex film keeps a respectful distance from well-documented WWII atrocities to allow for an ambiguous reading of evil.”

[Trailer]