Lola rennt
Run Lola Run
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © X-Verleih
Franka Potente
Lola rennt | Run Lola Run
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © X-Verleih
Franka Potente
Lola rennt | Run Lola Run
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © X-Verleih
Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu
Lola rennt | Run Lola Run
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © X-Verleih
Lola has to come up with 100,000 marks in the next 20 minutes. If she fails, a Berlin racketeer will kill her boyfriend, a bagman who screwed up and left the loot in the metro. Three sequences show Lola’s three attempts to get the money. The first involves a store robbery, the second a bank robbery. On the third run-through, Lola heads to a casino.
A fairy-tale motif meets the dramatic structure of a video game. The three variations are slightly time-shifted, and the three plot twists have life-altering consequences, including for secondary characters. Playing out the three scenarios as breakneck flash-forward photo stories is part of a post-modern bricolage for which Tom Tykwer tapped all the resources of cinema. Driven by trance and techno tracks, Run Lola Run is a cinematic loop, with video and 35 mm film, colour and black-and-white, split screens and slow motion, jump cuts and match cuts, animation and 360-degree dolly shots all wed together in a playful exploration of parallel realities – and in the first German film for the 21st century. The editing gives us a metropolitan Berlin in which East and West have merged into an imaginary playing field.
A fairy-tale motif meets the dramatic structure of a video game. The three variations are slightly time-shifted, and the three plot twists have life-altering consequences, including for secondary characters. Playing out the three scenarios as breakneck flash-forward photo stories is part of a post-modern bricolage for which Tom Tykwer tapped all the resources of cinema. Driven by trance and techno tracks, Run Lola Run is a cinematic loop, with video and 35 mm film, colour and black-and-white, split screens and slow motion, jump cuts and match cuts, animation and 360-degree dolly shots all wed together in a playful exploration of parallel realities – and in the first German film for the 21st century. The editing gives us a metropolitan Berlin in which East and West have merged into an imaginary playing field.
Trailer/Film Excerpt
With
- Franka Potente
- Moritz Bleibtreu
- Herbert Knaup
- Nina Petri
- Joachim Król
- Armin Rohde
- Heino Ferch
- Suzanne von Borsody
- Lars Rudolph
- Ludger Pistor
Crew
| Director | Tom Tykwer |
| Screenplay | Tom Tykwer |
| Cinematography | Frank Griebe |
| Editing | Mathilde Bonnefoy |
| Music | Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil |
| Sound Design | Frank Behnke |
| Costumes | Monika Jacobs |
| Make-Up | Margrit Neufink, Jekaterina Oertel |
| Animation | Gil Alkabetz |
| Producer | Stefan Arndt |
Additional information
35mm print: X-Verleih, Berlin
Frank Griebe, Tom Tywker
The cinematographer and the director-screenwriter give an interview.
Lola rennt | Run Lola Run · Retrospective · Feb 17, 2026
Tom Twyker, Frank Griebe, Annika Haupts, Nazgol Majlessi
The director (3. from left) and cinematographer (left) together with the programme coordinator of the Retrospective and Berlinale Classics (2. from left) and the consultant for script / project development for the Film und Medien Stiftung NRW (right).
Lola rennt | Run Lola Run · Retrospective · Feb 17, 2026