Never Look Away

Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor, 2018) is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's historical drama, and you can watch online on iFILM. Painter Kurt Barnert flees communist East Germany to work freely in the West, yet the past follows him: in the father of the woman he loves, he recognizes the man tied to a death he has never stopped grieving.

Tom Schilling carries Kurt, surrounded by a formidable cast. Sebastian Koch plays the respectable gynecology professor hiding a Nazi-era record under a polished surface; Paula Beer is his daughter Ellie, who becomes Kurt's wife and his muse. The story moves through three Germanies — the Third Reich, the socialist East, the consumerist West — so one man's life turns into thirty years of national memory. Kurt finds his voice not in slogans but in paint, and one canvas quietly exposes what words never could.

The director of The Lives of Others drew loosely on the life of artist Gerhard Richter. The film was up for two Oscars — Best Foreign Language Film and a cinematography nod for Caleb Deschanel, whose soft light functions almost as a second narrator. Three and a half hours is a commitment, but anyone drawn to weighty European cinema about guilt and art will lose track of the clock. Stream Never Look Away (2018) online on iFILM.