Stony Brook Will Open & Close with German premieres

Comedy and romance bookend the 2017 Stony Brook Film Festival presented by Island Federal Credit Union. The 22nd Annual SBFF opens on July 20^th at Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University.

U.S. premiere screening of Welcome to Germany (Willkommen bei den Hartmanns), a feature written and directed by Simon Verhoeven (Men in the City), opens the Festival. Welcome to Germany is a timely comedy about a well-off Munich family who offer to take in a refugee. The film stars Senta Berger, Heiner Lauterbach, Palina Rojinski, Elyas M'Barek and Eric Kabongo. The film from Picture Tree, produced by Quirin Berg, Michael Verhoeven, Simon Verhoeven and Max Wiedemann, is being shown in its first screening in North America.

A romantic comedy, Text for You, from writer-director-actress Karoline Herfurth closes the Stony Brook Film Festival on Saturday, July 29^th.  Also a U.S. Premiere, the German feature is about love, loss and texts that arrive from a mysterious stranger. Karoline Hurfurth starred in Berlin ’36, which won the Stony Brook Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award in 2010. The film also stars Friedrich Mücke, Nora Tschirner, Katja Riemann and Frederick Lau. In its international debut, Text for You, produced by Lothar Hellinger and Christopher Doll, screens from Beta Cinema.

The full schedule of features, documentaries and shorts will be announced on June 6^th at stonybrookfilmfestival.com.