Dominikus Probst

Egomania is a visually stunning end-of-the-world melodrama about lust, jealousy and murder set amidst solar eclipses, orchestral chants and the distant thunder of the boiling sea. The film’s characters – riddled with unconscious desires – find themselves imprisoned on an island. Drawing parallels to the work of British filmmaker Derek Jarman and staring Jarman’s actress-muse Tilda Swinton, Schlingensief’s raw and almost mythological film stands in contrast to his more offensive efforts.

13-year-old Pauline, called Pik, has lived with her grandmother Wischonka since her mother died. Pik has never met her father. Her grandmother runs a boarding kennel that is on the verge of insolvency because many customers have handed in their animals at the wrong address. Pik wants to help her grandmother and tries to raise money at Cologne airport by performing a song. But she is taken away by the airport police. Although she manages to escape from the police at first, she accidentally observes how the corrupt policeman Kowatsch and a customs officer take away seized drugs. Kowatsch realizes that he has been observed, but is unable to catch Pik.

An early declaration of war on narrative cinema, using a barrage of visual and acoustic elements while at the same time juggling ironically - as he still does - with the term 'avant-garde'. A number of other preferences and obsessions were evident at an early stage, e.g. the mind-numbing habit of having his people stumbling and screaming around: life as a race track. His films likewise feature a lot of theatrical and cryptic outpourings. No wonder that they failed at the box office. No wonder either, however, that Schlingensief was attracted to theatre.

The firefighter Erik wants to make a proposal to his girlfriend Sofie, but at the crucial moment sparkles the attractive Melissa in between. When Sofie learns that Erik had a fleeting affair with Melissa on Carnival, a world collapses for her. But the two gather again, as Erik promises high and holy that such a thing will never happen again. To underline the seriousness of his intentions, he makes her an unconventional offer: he "gives" her an infidelity. He should not have done that, because suddenly he threatens to lose Sofie to his best friend.

On July 24, 1978, a bomb blasted a hole in the outer wall of a prison in Celle, Germany. The attack was blamed on the Red Army Faction. Years later, in April 1986, the true background was revealed. The attack had been staged with the complicity of Lower Saxony's domestic intelligence service, the GSG 9 and high-ranking government officials. The result was the expansion of anti-terror measures to protect citizens. The documentary tries to get to the bottom of the affair, and at the same time asks whether this action is not just the tip of an iceberg, whether much more was not initiated to stir up public sentiment.