Circle

Winner
Panorama Audience Award
Berlin International Film Festival
Winner
Teddy Award ~ Best Feature Film
Berlin International Film Festival
This is a fascinating and often tumultuous story.

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The Circle

(Der Kreis)
Zürich in the mid 50's: The shy young teacher Ernst Ostertag (Matthias Hungerbühler) becomes a member of the gay organization DER KREIS (The Circle), whose publication unites the fragile yet vibrant post-World War II gay community in Switzerland. There he gets to know cabaret singer and female impersonator Röbi Rapp (Sven Schelker) and immediately falls in love with him. Ernst finds himself torn between his bourgeois existence and acceptance of his homosexuality; for Röbi it is about his first serious relationship, relationship which proves to last a lifetime.

THE CIRCLE features a unique blend of narrative and documentary formats with the modern day protagonists commenting on the scripted sequences of the film. The film deftly charts the increasing repression against homosexuals in Zurich as the two young and very different men fight for their love and together with their friends for the rights of gays. Fittingly, in 2003, Ernst and Röbi made history when, both 73 years old at the time, they became the first legally married same-sex couple in Switzerland

Switzerland's Official Submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards®

Winner - Panorama Audience Award at 2014 Berlin International Film Festival

Winner - Teddy Award at 2014 Berlin International Film Festival

Winner - Grand Jury Award 2014 Outfest Los Angeles
Not Rated
Genre
Documentary, Drama, Romance
Runtime
100
Language
Swiss German, German, French
Director
Stefan Haupt
Cast
Sven Schelker, Matthias Hungerbühler, Röbi Rapp, Ernst Ostertag
Awards:
Winner, Panorama Audience Award, Berlin International Film Festival
Winner, Teddy Award ~ Best Feature Film, Berlin International Film Festival
FEATURED REVIEW
James Rocchi, The Wrap

“The Circle” (“Der Kreis”) is a startlingly effective mix of drama and documentary, combining both interview footage of longtime lovers Ernst Ostertag and Röbi Rapp and the dramatized story of how they met in the 1950s as part of the social scene created by the gay literary and cultural journal from ...

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