Endzeit (“Ever After”) is a 2018 German horror film directed by Carolina Hellsgård from a screenplay by Olivia Vieweg, based on her comic book. The movie stars Gro Swantje Kohlhof, Maja Lehrer, Trine Dyrholm and Yûho Yamashita.
Two years after a viral zombie epidemic has left only two German cities uninfected, twenty-two year-old Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and twenty-six year-old Eva (Maja Lehrer) flee the brutal existence in Weimar and hop an automated train for the other supposed safe haven, Jena.
Unfortunately, the train unexpectedly stops mid-trip, leaving Vivi and Eva to reluctantly forge a bond as they make their way across a beautiful but zombified countryside in Thuringia (“the green heart of Germany”), towards the city and salvation at the other end of the line.
Background:
“Endzeit is a maximalistic female buddy movie set in the German apocalypse,” says director Hellsgård. “It depicts the friendship of two young women, who are forced to emancipate themselves in order to survive. In the end a kind of love arises, not only to each other but to the fantastic nature surrounding them.
But Hellsgård’s Endzeit – based on the feminist zombie comic by Olivia Vieweg (who also wrote the script) – asks a question rarely asked in the zombie genre, “Why did this happen?” Eva, who rejects her role of state-sanctioned murderer, and Vivi, who clings to the notion of finding her missing little sister, become allies by necessity. And, in the heart of the wilderness, they discover doomsday is undergoing a strange evolution.
Some of the flesh-eating zombies have foliage apparently growing out of their faces. So does, ‘The Gardener’ (played by Trine Dyrholm), a mostly-human caretaker of the environment who grows uncommonly robust vegetables with healing properties. Her message to the young women is that they may not be witnessing the end of the world, but the beginning of a better one.”
Vivi und Eva fliehen vor den Zombis. Eva wird gebissen.
The world premiere of Endzeit will be at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 7, 2018
