Mueller-Stahl’s films in Emden
With Armin Mueller-Stahl, the very first edition of the Emden-Norderney International Film Festival was able to bring a global star to East Frisia. In May 1990, the actor, who had recently moved to the United States, presented his first Hollywood film. In Music Box (1989), directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras, Mueller-Stahl plays the leading role alongside Jessica Lange: Mike Laszlo, a war criminal who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the USA, manages to hide his past from his family until the truth comes to light. In 1993, Mueller-Stahl returned to Emden with another film that deals with life under a dictatorship. In George Sluizer’s Utz, he plays the eponymous Baron von Utz, a porcelain collector in socialist Prague in the 1980s.
After these two appearances at the film festival, Mueller-Stahl told the press: ‘I’ve been here twice in a row now. You shouldn't overdo it. I'll let some time pass before my next visit. But I’ll be back.’
The accompanying programme to the Armin Mueller-Stahl exhibition, produced in cooperation with the Emden-Norderney International Film Festival, brings together cinematic masterpieces from European and American film history.