This film has many sources. Like joining my best friend on a concert tour with his celebrated string quartet. Or a paranoid dream about being trapped in a village after committing a crime. Or a poster I saw in a drab East-German town, announcing a fairytale-themed hairdo gala.
So this comedy grew like an absurdist collage, with things sitting side by side in impossible unions: the brutal and the tender, the idiotic and the profound, the crime and the hairdo.
The story is simple: a small community is seduced by the charm of lawless artists. What follows is the cycle from seduction to disenchantment to aggression.
This dark tale is played out in a childlike world of anarchy and playfulness. The characters are eccentric, pompous, irrational – the film itself is nonsensical and joyfully erratic: shifting genres, cutting dramatic corners, leaving gaping holes of plausibility.
Nothing is certain in this world, but everything is at stake. Nothing is serious, but everything is sincere. The ground is shifting underneath our feet. This is frightening and delightful in equal measure. This uncertainty at the heart of reality is what I want to capture in my film.