Cast
Matthias Habich, Krystyna Janda, Dorothea Walda, Bhasker Patel, Mareike Carrière, Zbigniew Zarmachowski, Joachim Król, Udo Samel
Team
Director
Robert Glinski
Script
Klaus Richter, Cezary Harasimowicz, Pawel Huelle
Director of Photography
Jacek Petrycki
Editor
Krysztof Szeptmanski
Sound
Gregor Voigt
Production Designer
Jochen Schumacher, Robert Czesak
Gaffer
Jacek Kurowski
Creative Producer
Ursula Vossen
Producer
Regina Ziegler, Henryk Romanowski, Filmcontract Ltd.
TV Editor
Renate Michel, Degeto
Call of the Toad
2004
“Call of the Toad“ is a serene, melancholy love story between a German man and a Polish woman, a tale which portrays the advent of modern capitalism in Poland with biting satire. The film is based on the outstanding novel of the same name by Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1989, while visiting Danzig, the city where he grew up, art historian Alexander Reschke (Matthias Habich) meets the vivacious Polish art restorer Aleksandra Piatowska (Krystyna Janda). He is a widower, she is a widow, and like him she has been driven out of her homeland; she originally comes from Vilna in Lithuania. Over dinner together one evening they have a brainwave: how would it be if they found it a charitable trust which allowed exiled people to be buried in the countries they came from? A kind of reconciliation cemetery for Germans in Danzig and for Poles in Vilna.
A few months later the idea has been put into action, and the two of them are a couple. They have launched a joint foundation with Polish and German board members. When the first burial takes place at the Danzig Reconciliation Cemetery, Aleksandra and Alexander are so moved that they have tears in their eyes. However, there is one problem: the Russians in Vilna have not yet reacted positively to the idea.
On top of which, before too long the Reconciliation Cemetery is being marketed on an increasingly commercial basis, while the basic idea that Aleksandra and Alexander have always cherished - a reconciliation of the people involved - is pushed into the background. The power of capitalism is stronger, and hard currency vanquishes the purely idealist concept.
This DVD is available commercially.
