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How a complete unknown created one of the most iconic music events of the 1970’s
“I’ve always been a stranger,” Ido Fluk told me when I met him in a near-empty conference room in a sleek, Nordic-designed hotel in Berlin this past February. It was the afternoon after the Berlin Film Festival’s world premiere of the Israeli director’s German-language film, Köln 75, a kinetic behind-the-scenes look at Keith Jarrett’s famous live album, The Köln Concert. Jarrett improvised the hour-long set at the Cologne Opera House on Jan. 24, 1975, on a substandard piano — a beat-up baby grand rehearsal piano instead of the 10-foot-long Bösendorfer Imperial he’d been promised.
The film has grossed over a million dollars at the German box office — no mean feat for a domestic production — and was nominated for four Lola awards (Germany’s version of the Oscars) including Best Picture.
Fluk, 40ish, with tousled hair and a thick mustache, stubble and round, dark-framed glasses, had a peripatetic upbringing. Born in Tel Aviv, he was raised both there and in Paris, where his family relocated for five years during his childhood. Just shy of 20, he moved to New York City to study at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts.
He returned to Israel to shoot his first feature film, Never Too Late (2011) about a young Israeli man who comes home after eight years in South America and takes a road trip in his 1985 Volvo through the country he left behind. It holds the unusual distinction of being the first crowd-funded Israeli film and won the main prize at the Fribourg Film Festival. Fluk shot his next film, The Ticket (2016), about a blind man who regains his vision, in Kingston, New York. Köln 75 was filmed largely on location in Cologne.
“I’ve always been, like, moving around. So for me, it’s very natural to go to a new country to make a film,” said Fluk. “I also think it’s the story of cinema a little bit these days where art house cinema in the States is kind of a dying breed. You see more and more filmmakers from the U.S. traveling to Europe.”
“And, you know,” he added, “it’s also kind of the story of Keith Jarrett in the 70s, which is that jazz musicians were losing their audiences in the States, and they started coming to Europe, because in Europe they still found an eager audience for their work. So I could identify with that, in a way.”
Fluk was wearing a black T-shirt for the British punk rock band Idles that showed a man in a balaclava posing with a birthday cake. The image was captioned, “JOY STILL AN ACT OF RESISTANCE.” Fluk has a musical background. When he moved to New York, he played bass for “all these punk bands that never made it.” One band that sort of did was Elephant Parade, a lo-fi indie outfit that he formed with his now-partner, Estelle Baruch. They played legendary venues and festivals like CBGB and South by Southwest and even opened for Beirut.
“I’m not a good musician by any means,” he said, “but it helps you understand just how difficult what Jarrett is doing. It’s such a feat, what this man was doing in the 70s, which means driving in this tiny car, and every night showing up at a new city and playing a new thing that nobody’s ever heard before. He doesn’t think about it. He just starts playing.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, the respect that Fluk has for Jarrett (a reclusive artist, now 80, who had nothing to do with the film), the director did not set out to make a conventional biopic. Instead, the narrative and emotional center of the film, which Fluk also wrote, is Vera Brandes, the 18-year-old self-made concert promoter who, 50 years ago, signed Jarrett for the gig, sold out the venue, and convinced the reluctant pianist to perform on a subpar keyboard for the 1400-strong crowd that packed into the Cologne Opera House for the 11:30 pm concert. (The late hour was due to a performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu earlier that evening, a wonderfully strange detail that makes it into the film).
“There are a lot of movies about music that tell you the same story. It’s about the artist. It’s about his rise. There’s some complication, then there’s a comeback, there’s a big show at the end. And here was a story about the woman behind the scenes. It wasn’t a story about the artist so much as about the promoter and the invisible people behind the artist. I thought that was really interesting and fresh,” Fluk said. At the start of the shoot, Fluk invited Brandes, now 69, to visit the set, an event that he recalled as inspiring for him and the film’s team.
“She’s like a punk rock goddess from the 70s who, like, changed the world and never got a proper thank you. This was an opportunity to shine a light on her, because however good Keith Jarrett is, no Vera Brandes, no ‘Cologne Concert.’ If Keith Jarrett had the perfect piano on stage that night, the album wouldn’t sound the way it sounds, and it wouldn’t be as special as it is,” he said.
Mala Emde, a 29-year-old German actress, plays Brandes as a spirited and determined young woman striking out on her own, using her charm, enthusiasm and tenacity to navigate (and often bluff her way through) an exciting adult world that she cannot wait to enter. Emde carries the film on her capable shoulders. Jarrett, performed with brittle world-weariness by the American actor John Magaro, is another standout.
Köln 75 was in pre-production for four years and Fluk used that time to learn German. “By the time we were shooting, I already understood German. Now I can read, I can understand – I don’t like speaking it because I sound like an idiot — but it was enough for me to hear actors improvise, which was really important for me in this film, because it’s a film about improvisation and it needed to feel free,” he said. He added that Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, about the birth of rave culture in late 1970s Manchester, was a key inspiration in terms of tone and energy, calling it “the spirit animal of this film.”
Fluk didn’t reveal too much about his upcoming projects, which include an HBO series based on the bestselling non-fiction book Empty Mansions and a legal thriller about the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which Fluk described as “a really beautiful script and really important story about American Jews and the way they were perceived in America.”
With so many stateside projects lined up, can we expect Fluk to film again in Europe or Israel in the future?
“If the story I want to tell is located there? Absolutely,” he said. “I am very agnostic about territory. I have a film, and the film says where it needs to be shot, then we go there and shoot it.”
Köln 75 begins its theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York on Oct. 17. (It opens a week later in Los Angeles).
The post How a complete unknown created one of the most iconic music events of the 1970’s appeared first on The Forward.
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Hezbollah Says Ceasefire ‘Meaningless’ as Fighting Continues in South
Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in a village in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army operates in it as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ayal Margolin
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said a US-mediated ceasefire in the war with Israel was meaningless a day after it was extended for three weeks, as Lebanese authorities reported two people killed by an Israeli strike and Hezbollah downed an Israeli drone.
US President Donald Trump announced the three-week extension on Thursday after hosting Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors at the White House. The ceasefire agreement between the governments of Lebanon and Israel had been due to expire on Sunday.
While the ceasefire has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in southern Lebanon, where Israel has kept soldiers in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Responding to the extension, Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said “it is essential to point out that the ceasefire is meaningless in light of Israel’s insistence on hostile acts, including assassinations, shelling, and gunfire” and its demolition of villages and towns in the south.
“Every Israeli attack… gives the resistance the right to a proportionate response,” he added.
Hezbollah is not a party to the ceasefire agreement, and has strongly objected to Lebanon’s face-to-face contacts with Israel.
BUFFER ZONE
The April 16 agreement does not require Israeli troops to withdraw from the belt of southern Lebanon seized during the war. The zone extends 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) into Lebanon.
Israel says the buffer zone aims to protect northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the war.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the group opened fire in support of Iran in the regional war. The ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington’s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce.
Nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since March 2, the Lebanese health ministry says.
ISRAELI MILITARY WARNS RESIDENTS TO LEAVE TOWN
Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike killed two people in the southern village of Touline on Friday.
Hezbollah shot down an Israeli drone, the group and the Israeli military said. Hezbollah identified it as a Hermes 450 and said it had downed it with a surface-to-air missile.
An Israeli drone was heard circling above Beirut throughout the day on Friday, Reuters reporters said.
The Israeli military warned residents of the southern town of Deir Aames to leave their homes immediately, saying it planned to act against “Hezbollah activities” there.
Deir Aames is located north of the area occupied by Israeli forces, and it was the first time Israel had issued such a warning since the ceasefire came into force on April 16. Posted on social media, the Israeli warning gave no details of the activities it said Hezbollah was conducting in the town.
The Israeli military also said it had intercepted a drone prior to its crossing into Israeli territory, and that sirens were sounded in line with protocol.
WAR-WEARY RESIDENTS SEEK END TO FIGHTING
The continued fighting has angered war-weary Lebanese, who say they want to see a genuine ceasefire put a full halt to violence.
“What’s this? Is this called a ceasefire? Or is this mocking (people’s) intelligence?” said Naem Saleh, a 73-year-old owner of a newsstand in Beirut.
Residents of northern Israel had mostly returned to daily life, but expressed pessimism about the longevity of the ceasefire with Lebanon.
“I believe that the ceasefire is so fragile, and unfortunately it won’t stand long, in my opinion,” said Eliad Eini, a resident of Nahariya, which lies just 10 km (6 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Israeli strikes killed at least five people in the south, including a journalist.
Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter, in his opening remarks at Thursday’s talks, said “Lebanon should acknowledge the temporary presence of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the right of Israel to defend itself from a hostile force that is firing on the population.”
Lebanon’s Ambassador to the United States Nada Moawad, in a written statement sent to Reuters, called for the ceasefire to be fully respected and said it would allow the necessary conditions for meaningful negotiations.
Lebanon has said it aims to secure the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from its territory in broader talks with Israel at a later stage.
Trump said on Thursday that he looked forward to hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the near future, and said there was “a great chance” the two countries would reach a peace agreement this year.
Hezbollah attacks killed two civilians in Israel after March 2, while 15 Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon since then, Israel says.
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Only Five Ships Pass Through Strait of Hormuz in 24 hours
FILE PHOTO: A map showing the Strait of Hormuz is seen in this illustration taken March 23, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Only five ships, including one Iranian oil products tanker, have passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours, Friday shipping data showed, after Iran seized two container ships this week and the US continues to blockade Iranian ports.
Shipping traffic passing through the crucial waterway at the entrance to the Gulf during an uneasy ceasefire between Washington and Tehran represents a fraction of the average 140 daily passages before the Iran war began on February 28.
“For most shipping companies, they will need a stable ceasefire and assurances from both sides of the conflict that the Strait of Hormuz is safe to transit,” said Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at shipping association BIMCO.
“In the meantime, shipping will be restricted to using routes close to Iran and Oman. Due to their confined nature, these routes cannot safely accommodate the normal volumes of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” Larsen added.
The Iranian-flagged oil products tanker Niki, which is subject to US sanctions, was among the few vessels that sailed out of the strait with no destination listed, Kpler analysis and tracking data on the MarineTraffic platform showed on Friday.
It was unclear what would happen if it continued to sail further east towards the blockade line imposed by the US Navy.
Nearly two months after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, there is little sign of peace talks resuming.
Container shipping group Hapag-Lloyd said on Friday that one of its ships has crossed the strait but did not provide any information on the circumstances or timing.
The Comoros-flagged supertanker Helga arrived at an offshore oil loading terminal in Iraq’s southern Basra port on Friday, the second vessel to reach Iraq since the strait’s closure.
Iran’s use of a swarm of small, fast boats to seize two container ships near the strait on Wednesday has heightened concerns among many shipping and oil companies.
“The latest seizures make clear, even an ‘open’ Strait of Hormuz is not a safe Strait of Hormuz for seafarers, ships and cargo,” Peter Sand, chief analyst with ocean and air freight intelligence platform Xeneta, said in a note.
Between April 22 and early April 23, seven vessels transited the strait, six of which were involved in Iran-related trade, analysis from Lloyd’s List Intelligence showed.
The closure of the strait has disrupted a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies and triggered a global energy crisis.
Hundreds of ships and 20,000 seafarers remained stranded inside the Gulf with war risk insurers and oil companies watching for any sign that the risks may have eased so they can prepare to sail through.
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11-Year-Old Girl Succumbs to Wounds from Iranian Missile Strike
A photo of Nesya Karadi. Photo: courtesy of her family.
i24 News – An 11-year-old girl has died nearly three weeks after being critically injured by an Iranian missile strike on her family home.
Nesya Karadi passed away Friday at Sheba Medical Center, becoming the 21st civilian fatality in Israel since the current conflict began on February 28.
The attack occurred on April 1, just hours before the start of Passover. Officials confirmed the strike involved an Iranian missile equipped with a cluster warhead; a sub-munition directly hit the Karadi home, wounding 14 people.
Among the injured was Nesya’s father, a volunteer with the Magen David Adom paramedic service. In a final act of heroism before losing consciousness from his own injuries, he reportedly administered life-saving first aid to his daughter.
Hanoch Zeibert, the Mayor of Bnei Brak, expressed the city’s deep grief over the loss of a “pure child whose whole life was ahead of her,” pledging the municipality’s full support to the Karadi family during their ordeal