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OTOMO Frieder Schlaich, D 2000

Two exceptional actors in an internationally award-winning German Film

Stuttgart in August 1989. A simple tram ticket check triggers a tragedy: When the asylum-seeker Frederic Otomo is caught without a ticket and detained, he starts to panick and runs off. A few hours later, when the Police close in on him on a bridge, he stabs two officers.

"Bloodbath on open street" was the headline of a daily newspaper und it reports on "on one of the most serious crimes in the history of this city", the rainbow press knows "The butcher wanted to murder.". The minister of the interior cancels his vacation and re-opens the discussion around the deployment of firearms by the police, there is a call for stricter asylum legislation. Public opinion boiling over.

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Press Coverage

Mr. Schlaich has shot the movie in unflattering terms; it’s lighted like a bathroom mirror, and the harshness fits the storytelling. (The New York Times, 7. Nov. 2001, Ellis Mitchell)

Schlaich puts his gifts at the service of the story, its mood, its implication of powerst hat victimize the protagonist – like the long shots of Otomo seated alone on one end of a bench or of him moving down a cheerless empty street. Schlaich’s work is reminiscent of Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog and Alexander Kluge in the abundant German New Wave of three decades ago. It’s a reminiscence worth having. (The New Republic, 19. Nov. 2001, Stanley Kauffmann)

Awards and Festivals