Bright Future
Date:
December 15, 2022
Bright Future
Bright Future
by Lara Scherpinski
Elemag Pictures | Germany
Live-action feature | 1st feature
Logline
In former East-Germany, a mother is torn between her political beliefs and the love for her children, as the system she helped create, slowly disrupts her family and questions her moral boundaries.
Synopsis
BRIGHT FUTURE is a portrait of a mother caught between political conviction and the love for her children in a crumbling socialist state. Told in layered timelines in Halle, Germany and Vienna, Austria and through visually powerful metaphors, the film depicts the slow disruption of a family—and of a belief system. After her son Pit is imprisoned for his attempt of escape, Elsa, a lead chemist for the states photography film research, begins to find ways to help her child, but has to face the hidden mechanisms of a state that controls its people.
While she tries to hold her family together she begins to realize that she has become part of a growing crime herself. The GDR is not reconstructed in a documentary manner, but created as a cinematic space of references and memories. It offers a profoundly female, East German perspective on guilt, denial, and the human cost of ideological collapse. It questions what remains from the past and what is worthwhile for the future.
Director’s Profile
Lara Scherpinski (born in Schönebeck/Elbe (Sachsen-Anhalt) studied stage and costume design at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, as well as stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Lara Scherpinski works as a writer and director for film and theatre productions, as well as a costume and stage designer. Her work has been highly acclaimed at international festivals such as the Berlinale, Camerimage, the International Hof Film Festival and the Fast Forward Festival.
Her second short film as a director DIE HEIMKEHR DER SPARGEL STECHER (The Return of the Asparagus Pickers) won the audience award at Kurzsuechtig short film festival Leipzig in 2023. She has received several scholarships, including the German National Academic Foundation, the Academy of Music Theatre Today and the Art Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt. BRIGHT FUTURE is her directorial debut as a feature film.
Company Profile
ELEMAG PICTURES is a Gera/Thuringia/Germany based film production company focussing on developing, co-producing & producing high-quality international films with a very high artistic quality and remarkable human stories of originality, capable of engaging audiences around the globe.
Managing partner. ELEMAG PICTURES has experience with international co-productions with various countries, both as a majoritarian and minoritarian partner and has since co-produced Dmytro Sucholytkyj-Sobtschuks SILENT FLOOD premiering at IDFA 2025, THE EDITORIAL OFFICE by Roman Bondarchuk, premiered at BERLINALE Forum 2024, Emre Kayis’ THE ANATOLIAN LEOPARD, awarded with FIPRESCI Award at TIFF 2021, Vincent Cardona’s MAGNETIC BEATS, awarded with Prix SACD at Director`s Fortnight Cannes 2021, Sonia Liza Kentermann’s TAILOR, Black Nights Filmfestival 2020. The non-fiction ANOTHER REALITY by Noel Dernesch and Olli Waldhauer, premiered at Locarno International Filmfestival 2019 and was awarded with the Audience Award at DOK.Fest Munich the same year.