Blue Skin / Flammend’ Herz

Blue Skin

Herbert, the prosperous entrepreneur living amongst post-card Swiss mountains. Karlmann, son of one of Northern Germany’s richest families. And Albert, the olde-style sailor. Three lifelong friends who devoted their lives to a common passion when this was seriously taboo: tattooing.

At first, the three give the impression of friendly, polite and well-to-do gentlemen around 90. And that´s exactly what they are. But once they take off their shirts, their blue tattooed skin tells dramatic stories of a life firmly on the other side of convention.

Emotional stories of love and love lost, of friendship and betrayal, of standing up for what you believe in against all odds. BLUE SKIN is the loveable, sometimes tragic, sometimes very funny account of how the three once met, why they find it hard to get on nowadays and whether there’s any hope of making up. And through their biographies, we catch a glimpse of more than one century of one the world’s most beautiful addictions: tattooing.

Details

Country of Production
Germany / Switzerland

Year of Production
2004

Format
35mm, Digi Beta Pal

Length
92 min

Director
Andrea Schuler and Oliver Ruts

Production
Egoli Tossell Film AG in co-production with Cobra Film, ZDF/ Kleines Fernsehspiel and SFDRS

Original Language
German

Subtitles
English

Festivals / Awards

Berlinale 2004 (DIALOGUE EN PERSPECTIVE for the best film of the section German Perspective)
Dokwoche Hamburg 2004
DOKfest München 2004
KunstFilmFest Schwerin 2004
Neiße FF 2004
Pink Apple FF Zürich 2004
Sommer-Berlinale Wolfsburg 2004
Festival des Deutschen Films Paris 2004
Cork FF 2004
Hannover Schwul-Lesbisches Filmfest 2004
Filmtage Solothurn 2004
Queersicht Bern 2004
Festival des Deutschen Films London 2004
East Lansing FF 2005
Queer FF Wien 2005
Anonimul St. Gheorghe 2005
Berlinale in Athens 2006
Montréal Underground FF 2009