Falscher Bekenner / Fieber
Director
Christoph Hochhäusler
Germany / 1998
13 min.
/ 35 mm
/ Original version
Original language
German
“Don’t we know each other from somewhere?” Paul films his older sister Vera with a camcorder. Constantly. While she’s putting on makeup in the bathroom, at the disco, while flirting in the underground car park. Somewhere between a home movie and voyeurism. She’s annoyed—but then again, maybe not. Christoph Hochhäusler’s early short film explores the possibilities of the camera—as the filmmaker’s eye, as an instrument of control. In doing so, he addresses a question that will prove crucial to his future work: how can the camera be used to establish relationships between people? (bik)
Director
Christoph Hochhäusler
Germany / 2005
94 min.
/ DCP
/ Original version with English subtitles
One job application per day and one interview per week—that’s what Armin (Constantin von Jascheroff) has promised his parents. He’s the youngest son of a middle-class family living in a suburban home in the provincial Rhineland. “How do you see yourself?” asks an HR manager. Armin struggles to sell himself in the right way. Only his nightly wanderings along the highway and in rest stop bathrooms seem to mean anything to him. When he writes an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for a banker’s fatal accident instead of submitting another job application, he finally seems to have taken action. FALSCHER BEKENNER precisely captures adolescent emotional states and leaves it unclear in certain scenes whether they belong to reality or Armin’s imagination. A coming-of-age film of a unique kind, accentuated at times by an extraordinary soundtrack featuring alienating music by Benedikt Schiefer.(bik)
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