coming soon

Direction: Irene von Alberti

with Britta Hammelstein, Mavie Hörbiger, Yousef Sweid, Bibiana Beglau, Godehard Giese

Germany 2024, 104', German with english subtitles

from 12.12.2024

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OT: Die geschützten Männer

Germany, shortly before elections. Anita Martinelli and Sarah Bedford are pursuing grand political goals with their newly founded women’s party FEM. They are campaigning for a new system in which ecology, equality and sustainability have top priority. Yet during the election campaign, a new kind of disease breaks out, infecting only men. Differences between the sexes long believed to have been overcome now shake the very foundations of the society. When the chancellor falls victim to the virus, women take over the government. Anita Martinelli’s husband Ralph, an experienced virologist, is to develop a vaccine against the virus with his team in a remote, well-guarded forest laboratory. While the self-proclaimed chancellor Bedford secretly boycotts the work on the vaccine, Anita Martinelli and a group of other women decide to stop the repressive government’s plans. A counter-movement forms, fueled by a strong utopian desire for a better society. They rescue Ralph Martinelli and the other “protected men” in a spectacular escape from the lab and bring him and the serum to safety. The last surviving men are successfully vaccinated and the man-hating chancellor is toppled. With the remaining men, the women start over, endeavoring to create a better future.

Biting political satire about power, oppression and gender roles based on the 1974 novel "The Virility Factor" by Robert Merle (French original: "Les hommes protégés").