Opening Film 2023

The 72nd International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg celebrates its official opening on November 16 with the German premiere of ›Day of the Fight‹, the directorial debut of British acting star Jack Huston, who will be present as a guest at the Opening Night. In ›Day of the Fight‹ Jack Huston draws in powerful black-and-white images the portrait of the formerly celebrated boxer Mikey, who starts his comeback after his release from prison. But only Mikey knows that his life is on the line in this fight.
Jack Huston, born in 1982, gained fame for his role as Richard Harrow in ›Boardwalk Empire' and his appearances as ›Ben-Hur‹ (2016), in ›American Hustle‹ as well as the series ›Fargo‹ and most recently ›Mayfair Witches‹.

Festival director Sascha Keilholz: "With ›Day of the Fight‹ we have won a deeply humanistic, emotionally stirring drama as our opening film. The underdog story, photographed hauntingly and lyrically by Peter Simonite, is very much in the tradition of great boxer films. This closes the curatorial bracket to the retrospective, which also kicks off on November 16 with Robert Rossen's 1947 ›Body and Soul‹ and concludes on November 26 with Martin Scorsese's classic ›Raging Bull‹. All three films are existentialist parables, telling of toxic masculinity, the violence and fragility of the male body, and the ring as a metaphor for life. They are characterized by the emphatic physical work of their protagonists. A debut as an opening night film fits perfectly with IFFMH's traditional approach of making new directorial voices heard."