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a film by Michael Glawogger Germany 2009 117min Drama 1:1.85 Dolby SRD Colour German / English
SYNOPSIS Ratz Kramer is 35 years old, the son of a minister and what most people would call a loser. Tortured by feelings of guilt towards his mother and full of hate for his father who left the family for a younger woman. Ratz spends all his time in front of his computer developing a bizarre computer game so he can fulfill his wish of killing his father. At least virtually. One day he gets a strange call from his attractive one time girlfriend Mimi. She convinces him to come to New York to help her. Ratz flies to America without really knowing what to expect but takes his computer game in the hope of selling it to a games developer. Mimi wants him to help her renovate the hiding place of her grandfather, a Lithuanian Nazi war criminal who has been in hiding for 32 years in the cellar of a house on Long Island. As the basement renovations start to come together, Ratz is unwillingly confronted by the past and the complex moral choices that faced his father s generation and that before him. In the mean time a certain Jonas Shtrom has been searching for Mimi s grandfather. Also tortured by guilt, as a boy Jonas witnessed his fathers killing and has since devoted his life to find the murderer and bring him him to justice. With the net closing in, Ratz has to grow up and sort out his emotions towrds Mimi, his new war criminal friend and his father. But where will his violent computer game fit in, especially since it has become a huge success?
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL GLAWOGGER What for you is the main topic of the film? Kill Daddy Goodnight is essentially a film about guilt. It is based on the novel Das Vaterspiel by Josef Haslinger. How did you go about adapting the book to a screenplay, did you change anything? The film is much shorter. It focuses on two of the most important plot lines and intertwines them: That of Ratz and his computer game and the story of Johnas Shtrom. By not illustrating the events described in Johnas monologue, the film is very close to the literary original. Someone is sitting there and simply telling a long story. I liked the idea of that. What interested you in the story to want to make it into a film? In the beginning there was a series of images that attracted me. It started with a young man driving through a snow storm at night. His interior world meets the outside world in the most beautiful way. The whole mental state of the main character, Ratz is depicted as he tries to pass a snow drift that is blocking him. I started understanding the material visually and with that, also with regards to the content thanks to this sequence. Most stories have a core, where all elements come together in a single sequence like this. How the inner and outer world of Ratz coincide is really the heart of the story. Ratz must be one of the most original screen protagonists to come along in a while. Can you tell us who he is and what drives him? Ratz has a lot of people surrounding him. He is irritated by the noise people make about themselves. He can hardly stand it when this noise reaches him and gets too loud. He backs away and builds his own universe, that s why he becomes a good observer. He watches the waves of people slowly rolling in his direction and always steps back a little so as not to get his feet wet. When he does finally get wet, then it s all finally for real and no longer his made up world. Mimi also has an interesting role in the film. Who is she? She is a butterfly never resting in one place for long, it s a way of being that she has cultivated. It s her way to keep the world at a distance. In a way she resembles Ratz. The two recognize each other, without understanding each other.
How does Ratz comes to terms with his relationship with his father? Ratz kills his father, again and again. He is bringing those virtual murders to a higher and higher level and through this, finds a purpose in his life. Then his father kills himself and it s the point where the two realities collide. It is very painful, but also logical. What is perhaps more important, is that his father was fascinated himself by Ratz s computer game but his suicide had nothing to do with it. That s why Ratz in a sense takes the place of his father in the game.
Why do think there are so many stories at the moment revisitng what happended during Second World War? Maybe it s a natural rhythm that it takes some time until examination of recent history goes deeper and the point of view changes. Some day there will be no more spontaneous stories about this and we will move on. Why do you mix the imaginary and the real in the film? Because otherwise, it s not possible to span this wide a timescale. Only if I can embed Ratz s World in the context of not only his computer games, but also his time at university or the love he feels for his sister, it can mean something, when he is sitting in the cellar of a house in New York and listening to an old war criminal. I chose a rather associative form of story telling to approach this character. On the one hand connected to the book, and on the other hand it seemed to fit the characters. In the same fractured way memory works - when you think of someone or remember your own youth. How did you cast the film? I always try to bring together performers from different worlds of acting. This generates a special energy. People who would otherwise rarely play together classic film actors, some who usually play comedies, theatre performers or others who are especially strong in improvisation. Sabine Timoteo is a professional dancer. I love to watch her in this film, even when you turn off the sound. Can you tell us a little more about your ideas for the use of different types of video game in the movie. There are three levels of the computer game: the simple version Ratz starts to program in the eighties and that reminds us of the times of Larry Leisure or Space Invaders. Then the refined version of the late nineties, and finally the version in which the imaginary and reality blend. The last is the most advanced, because one always imagines everything so perfectly, as it can never be in reality. Like when you make movies.
Michael Glawogger Director, Writer Michael Glawogger is a traveling filmmaker. Not only does he literally journey around the world for his documentaries, he also moves back and forth between forms and genres, between photography and writing, between gentler and more forceful tones. He graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute and the Vienna Film Academy and has since worked as a director, writer, anxd cinematographer in Vienna, Bangkok, and Znojmo. He plans to shoot in Thailand, Mexico and Bangladesh in the near future. 2009 - Kill Daddy Goodnight / Das Vaterspiel - Feature 2008 - Contact High - Feature 2005 - Slumming - Feature www.slumming.at 2004 - Workingman s Death - Documentary www.workingmansdeath.com 2004 - Slugs - Feature www.nacktschnecken.at 2002 - State of the Nation - Documentary 1999 - France, Here We Come! - Documentary 1998 - Megacities - Documentary 1996 - Movies in the mind - Documentary 1995 - Ant Street - Feature 1989 - War in Vienna - Documentary www.glawogger.com
CREW Director Screenplay Based on the novel Das Vaterspiel by Producer Director of Photography Production Design Costume Design Make-up Sound Casting Editor Music Executive Producer Co-Producers MICHAEL GLAWOGGER MICHAEL GLAWOGGER JOSEF HASLINGER published by S.Fischer Verlag CHRISTINE RUPPERT ATTILA BOA BERTRAM STRAUSS MARTINA LIST HEIKE MERKER BERND HACKMANN MARKUS SCHLEINZER VESSELA MARTSCHEWSKI OLGA NEUWIRTH HELGA BINDER ERICH LACKNER THIERRY POTOK/CHRISTOPH MAZODIER A Tatfilm Production in co-prodcution with Lotus-Film Polaris Film Production & Finance ARTE France Cinéma WDR/ARTE with the participation of ORF (Film/Fernseh-Abkommen) ARD Degeto Newgrange Pictures Limited with the support of Filmstiftung NRW Eurimages Österreichisches Filminstitut Deutscher Filmförderfonds MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg Filmfonds Wien MEDIA Programme of the European Community Land Niederösterreich Bord Scannán na héireann/irish Film Board
CAST Ratz Mimi Jonas Shtrom Kramer Lucas Lucas, 40 Ratz Mother Ratz Sister Grandfather HELMUT KÖPPING SABINE TIMOTEO ULRICH TUKUR CHRISTIAN TRAMITZ ITZHAK FINZI SAMUEL FINZI MICHOU FRIESZ FRANZISKA WEISZ OTTO TAUSIG