Der Samurai

A monster is prowling the East German provinces. “A wolf” they think at first, but then it’s a man in a dress, armed with a samurai sword, who rampages through the village and its front gardens and seems to have no clear goal. The young police officer Jakob is on his trail, approaching him again and again until a strange closeness develops that blurs the boundaries of the real and the uncanny. The horror genre is not very popular in German cinema, but Till Kleinert’s debut feature manages to touch a vortex in whose maelstrom psychology, fairy tales, East-and West-German realities and questions of identity continue to intermingle until they culminate in a fantastic and disturbing finale. Kleinert himself describes his first feature as a “cinematic bastard” and a “dazzling amalgam of Grimm’s fairy tales, a coming-out narrative overdriven into the nightmarish, and a lusty fantasy of liberation and revenge.” A unique piece in the German film landscape.  

Image © Schattenkante