BÜBCHEN Roland Klick, Deutschland 1968, 86 min

In a german suburb a babysitter is too busy with her own teenage business and leaves little boy Achim alone with his little sister. Out of the blue, Achim murders his little sister and hides the body on the scrapyard. As the family returns home, a frenetic search begins. There are suspects, there are lies - and unpleasant things will come to light.

Achim's never-clear stated motivation - be it curiosity, jealousy, carelessness, mere boredom or full intention - was already provoking enough for the film's 1969 audience. But Achim's precision and calmness when dumping the baby's body in the boot of a scrap car set off a storm of indignation.

Shunned at the time because it never takes the moral high ground, "Bübchen" is a pitch perfectly directed chamber play and a sharp study of German lower middle class society in the late 60s. Klick's feature film debut exposes the dark underbelly of suburbia in a way that took German cinema completely by surprise.

Following the little boy in almost documentary fashion with stunning cinematography by Robert van Ackeren, the film completely does away with conventions like poetic justice and delivers no attempts to render the horror comprehensible. It is perhaps the epitome of the cinema of Roland Klick: telling stories as well and uncompromisingly as possible.

Starring Sascha Urchs (as the little boy) in arguably one of the best child performances ever put to screen and Klick-discovery Renate Roland who won the German Film Award in Gold for her performance as the babysitter!

"Bübchen" is the 5th film in our "Debut Films" edition in cooperation with film magazine "Schnitt"!

READ MORE about the director ROLAND KLICK