Here’s a review. No spoiler. I’ve spent a lot of time in Berlin and look forward to the movie and scenes from the city.
On a dark autumn evening, a car pulls out of a rest stop northwest of Berlin onto the A 111 heading towards the city. Not long after, Omer (Alpha Omer Cissé), a young West African, and Carine (Sylvaine Faligant), from Marseille, enter a corner bar and take a seat. When Omer leaves his stool for the toilet, another customer in his late-fifties, Dieter (Thorsten Merten), eyes the pretty young woman alone at the bar. Carine gives him a friendly smile, so he grabs his beer and joins her. They chat a bit, but when Omer returns he is far from pleased and tells Dieter to get off his stool. After a tense exchange, Carine steps in to bring down the temperature. The men agree to settle it with a game of pool, and Omer demands that Carine give him money so he can bet on the game. Carine is visibly annoyed, but when Omer insists, she gives in....
Later outside the bar, Omer and Carine get into the car with Dieter's money, smile at each other and drive downtown. They arrive at a dingy apartment and discuss their plans at the living room table. Carine counts their money and confirms they have over 10,000 euros. She would be happy to leave it at that, and use the money to open a beach bar in France. But Omer is set on winning far more than 10,000, and wants to use the money to play the "Sultan" (Yotam Ishay) instead...
Shot entirely in Berlin on a shoestring budget in black and white, the neo-noir Night To Be Gone was the discovery of the 2023 Noir Film Festival held at the medieval Český Šternberk castle in the Czech Republic. Chicago-born writer-director Loren David Marsh's story about partners in crime Omer and Carine is influenced by Robert Rossen's The Hustler (USA, 1961) as well as several film noirs from the 1940s and 1950s. Omer is an ace pool player, but with Carine's help he passes himself off as an impulsive and clumsy wannabe, luring their victims with the expectation of winning some fast cash. But once they take the bait, Omer shows his true talent and takes their money before they know what hit them. The hustle works perfectly until they meet their match in the equally talented "Sultan", who cleverly exploits the repressed tensions between Omer and Carine... Taking full advantage of the rainy, urban atmosphere of Berlin at night and shot in its corner bars, hotels and sparsely furnished apartments, practically everyone in this film has at least one foot outside the law. No one puts their cards on the table, because that's exactly what people living on their luck -- rich or poor -- can't afford. But the greatest danger the main characters face in this film comes from within. As in classic film noir, love is a fatal weakness that could be deadly, throwing them off balance and upsetting the cool calculation they need for their schemes to succeed. So where's the surprise? It's easy to see. Loren Marsh takes a classic approach to storytelling but deliberately and expertly avoids a retro feel. He never fetishizes the settings and locations, instead using the Berlin metropolis as a backdrop for a story that is true to life and without a hint of hipsterism or trendiness. Suspenseful and bold from the very first frame, Night to be Gone keeps the tension high till the end with plot twists that few will see coming. All that makes it a real discovery, especially at a time when blockbusters and special effects have left hardly any space for neo-noir in the cinema landscape.
The international team behind and in front of the camera is entirely convincing. Sylvaine Faligant is actually French; Alpha Omer Cissé is from Mali. Loren David Marsh, who has been working in the film business for 25 years, is American, and both Yotam Ishay and cinematographer Vlad Margulis are from Israel. The rest of the cast and crew are from Germany. Actor Thorsten Merten is familiar to many audiences from the first four seasons of Babylon Berlin (Germany, 2017-2022), and cinematographer Florian Wurzer worked on Sebastian Schipper's successful neo-noir Victoria (Germany, 2015), which also screened at the 2020 NOIR CITY film festival in San Francisco. After premiering in Paris, Night to be Gone came to the attention of American critic and scholar Foster Hirsch (Film Noir: The Dark Side Of The Screen, 1983). Hirsch selected the film for a special screening in New York in November 2023 at the Cinema Arts Centre. Hopefully gate-keepers in Germany will also soon take notice of this gem of an independent film and give it the attention it deserves at film festivals, in art house cinemas or on streaming platforms.
To date (2023) no DVD or Blu-ray is available, and the film is still screening primarily at international film festivals. Look for a release on streaming platforms in the near future.
