30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Based on the television series inspired by Thomas Mann's novel, the film follows Hans Castorp's seven years in the Berghof sanatorium in Davos, in the Alps of the Grisons. On the verge of becoming a civil engineer, Hans goes to the sanatorium for a three-week visit to his cousin Joachim, an army officer recovering from tuberculosis. In the meantime, he discovers that he too has fallen ill and is kept from active life for seven years, gradually becoming contaminated by the morbid atmosphere that pervades the place. He takes part in the philosophical debates between Settembrini, a progressive secular humanist, and Naphta, a radical Jesuit, and falls in love with the enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally released in 1914, he is plunged into the horrors of the First World War. Shot at the Tempelhof Studios in Berlin and in various locations in Switzerland, this film is the only faithful cinematic adaptation of Mann's masterpiece.

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  Hans Wilhelm Geissendörfer

  A German screenwriter, director, and producer, he made his first amateur short films in the 1960s, while studying German literature. In 1970, with Jonathan, he won the Deutscher Filmpreis. In 1978 he directed The Crystal Alibi, receiving a nomination for the 1979 Academy Awards. In 1981 he shot The Magic Mountain, a film adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel. He also directed Edith's Diary (1983). In the following years he has mainly worked in production and television.