A film by Marco Schmitt
Germany / Switzerland 2016

Produced for Manifesta 11

SYNOPSIS
The conflict between freedom and security underlies Marco Schmitt’s film. It takes as its inspiration Luis Buñuel’s surreal masterpiece El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel, 1962), in which guests at a dinner party suddenly feel themselves, inexplicably, to be trapped in a room. Buñuel’s macabre metaphor for life in Franco-era Spain retains all its power in present-day Zurich, where the grim farce is replayed in a police museum, packed wall-to-wall with weapons.
The police officers who took part in Schmitt’s acting workshops can be seen, however, to enjoy the comic release from their professional personae.