Film Screening: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

Join Goethe-Institut Houston at POST for a film screening of The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.

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Alone in an unfamiliar Vienna after being ejected from a soccer match for a foul, goalkeeper Josef wanders aimlessly through the streets, ducking into bars, theaters, and telephone booths. He spends the night with a cinema cashier after following her home, but when the morning-after turns violent, Josef finds himself fleeing to his former girlfriend’s house in the country. There, he decides to live in plain sight, whether the police arrive or not.

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Based on the novella of the same title by Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke, The Goalie’s Anxiety gathers urban flaneurism, Hitchcockian suspense, mid-century ennui, and post-war cultural Americanization into a queasy but definitive early work of one of German cinema’s greats.

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“Wim Wenders’ bizarre noir is a keeper... [a] majestic meditation on madness, misogyny and the American dream.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 07/13/2018

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‍The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick screened at the 1972 Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize, and at the first edition of New Directors/New Films in the same year.

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Unavailable outside of Germany for forty years due to uncleared music rights, the film was restored and re-released internationally in 2014.

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For more info, visit the Goethe Institut Houston's website.