PRESS KIT “DER NACHTMAHR“ SYNOPSIS Tina is 17 years old and seemingly has everything a girl her age could wish for. But one night after an intense party, she begins having severe nightmares. From this point forward she is haunted daily by a profoundly hideous creature. Her parents do not believe her story. The only one with whom she talks about her fears is her psychiatrist. He encourages her to get in touch with the creature. At first Tina refuses to, but after she overhears her parents’ plans to put her in a mental hospital, she overcomes her fear and begins talking to creature. To her surprise, Tina discovers that the creature actually exists as a personification of her fears, and that it perceives the same emotions and sensations as she does. Out of fear of being taken for a freak by her friends and family, she hides the creature in her room. And as time goes by she loses her disgust of him. A trusting relationship develops between Tina and creature - much like with a wild animal found abandoned in the wilderness - and by dealing with the creature Tina learns more about her true self. However, before long, her parents and eventually her friends discover the creature with their own eyes… NEWS RELEASE DER NACHTMAHR, somewhat reminiscent of Donnie Darko and Spring Breakers, is a fresh, young and powerful film out of Germany. Without judging his characters, AKIZ, in his second feature film, tells the gripping, and at times terrifying, story of a young girl who falls completely out of her normal reality. With extraordinary performances by the newly discovered talent Carolyn Genzkow in her first feature film role, as well as Sina Tkotsch (“Beautiful Bitch”), Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht (“Die Hippies, Long Live Punk!”) and Alexander Scheer (“Carlos – The Jackal”), DER NACHTMAHR portrays in electrifying fashion, and through an aggressive and pulsating soundtrack, what it is like to feel young and isolated, seemingly without hope, only to finally come to terms with one’s self in the end. PRESS QUOTES „The director AKIZ has mixed black romance, comic as well as horror elements to give shape to Tina’s fears. […] AKIZ has not made a typical coming-of-age story, [...], with a great soundtrack and very good looking girls.” -- (Süddeutsche Zeitung) "DER NACHTMAHR" is bound to be one of the most assaulting teasers you will see [...]. With a barrage of striking images set against a soundtrack designed to make your heart race, it hints at a sensory experience that will only serve to be more terrifying and bizarre when seen on the big screen.“ -- (Indiewire) „A beautiful film which has already received much international attention, and for which festivals will surely battle.” -- (Christoph Gröner, Section “New German Cinema”/ Filmfest Munich) "DER NACHTMAHR" is an exceptionally well-done and good looking first film, intelligently constructed, beautifully featured, shot in short mostly dark takes, underlayed with a fast beating soundtrack.“ -- (Fipresci) Press Kit DER NACHTMAHR 2 AKIZ - Screenplay & Director / Producer Biography: AKIZ studied directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. His thesis film was nominated for an Academy Award. Until 2004 he worked on documentary films and freelance work. Parallel to that he has been working on sculptures and paintings as well as other art projects. His short film PAINTING REALITY was shot in 2010. The film was discovered by Banksy, and was then featured in his film THE ANTIC'S ROAD SHOW and was also shown at the Saatchi Gallery London in 2013. The production company OOO-Films was founded by AKIZ in 2012 which has now produced its first feature film with DER NACHTMAHR. 2014 Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) presents AKIZ work at MoMA in New York together with Ad Rock (Beasty Boys) as part of the "PopRally“. Since 2015 AKIZ has been working together with Philip Virus as part of the directing collective „Pentagon“. DER NACHTMAHR is AKIZ’ first part of the „Demonic Trilogy“, which as part of a film cycle deals with the triptych “Birth, Love and Death”. Filmography ’10 EVOKATION Short film '10 PAINTING REALITY Short film '15 NOVAKANIA Short film ’15 DER NACHTMAHR Feature film `16 DIE WEISSE BRIGADE Feature film (in preparation) DIRECTOR’S NOTE DER NACHTMAHR is the first part of the ‘Demonic Trilogy’ “Birth, Love and Death” in which a creature, as an amorphous fetus figure, becomes visible for the first time. All parts of the triptych deal with a more or less “speechless” creature which is confronted by society and generates chaos. DER NACHTMAHR is for me a story of a young warrior who pushes her way through a media-obsessed world and eventually finds her true self again. The drama isn’t triggered by “evil” antagonists who make life difficult for the leading actress. On the contrary, it was important to me that nobody in the story reacts in a cold-hearted or ruthless way towards Tina’s problem. It is left up to the audience whether Tina’s alienation from her environment is triggered or reinforced through the almighty multimedia interconnectedness of the youngsters or if Tina’s “differentness” in our contemporary “perfect” society is the root of the problem which globally has been diagnosed as youth depression by psychologists. Press Kit DER NACHTMAHR 3 INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR AND SCREENPLAY WRITER AKIZ How would you define the film’s genre? DER NACHTMAHR can’t be classified in any well-defined genre. This also wouldn’t have interested me. It is not a classical coming of age film. And at the same time also not a horror film in which a monster runs around and kills people. It’s more about deep psychological aspects, like you can find in the work of Sigmund Freud, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, C.G. Jung or William Blake – my biggest idol. Maybe the term "Narcotic-Mindfuck-Melodrama" says it best. The most suitable and flattering term which I heard in this context is „New Germany Fantastic Cinema“. This is the most accurate since the roots of DER NACHTMAHR lie in the expressionist films of the 20’s. What was the original idea for the film? With this film I never sat in front of a sheet of white paper and pondered what I should write about. To begin with, I just wanted to make a static figure made of cast stone. The underlying idea was a mixture between a very old man and an embryo. This was more than 13 years ago. When the figure was done, I had the idea to make it again out of soft material and to give it a realistic surface so I could take pictures of it in different surroundings, I was living in Los Angeles at the time and wanted to take pictures of the figure next to highways and on the verge of industrial areas. This is where the civilized and industrial world border with the rough and desert like nature. Like the part on the verge of the human field of vision, where the visible part merges with the blind part at the edge of the pupil. Later on the mechanics and the breathing were added since I wanted to shoot a scene in which the creature was driving while a girl was sleeping on the passenger seat. Although I’m a sculptor, I’m not familiar with the technical details on how handle foam latex, precision mechanics and so on so that the work to build the creature lasted several years. In this time I wrote down a lot of notes which were the foundation of writing this particular script. It might sound odd but it feels to me like I wasn’t the one who actually came up with the story. Although I found these notes between the tools when I was building this creature but I can hardly remember having written these notes and they also seemed strange to me. Some parts I couldn’t even read. Although it was without a doubt my very own handwriting. I then tried to place these moments and pictures into a logical structure. The actual story made first sense to me when I discovered that these particular notes were more like pages of a diary from the various characters from the movie, describing the same phenomenon out of their own view. As I discovered later on, I have subconsciously used a technique the surrealist in the 20’s called "ecriture automatique“. Why did you choose Berlin as the setting? It was a simple logistical decision to shoot the film there. My network, my friends and everyone who was involved with this movie lives in Berlin. Locations and technical equipment, everything is cheaper in Berlin. Apart from that Berlin is the focal point of youth culture which at the moment can’t be found anywhere else in the world. The mix between teenagers, music, art and drugs in this concentration is unique. Press Kit DER NACHTMAHR 4 The film uses music in an extreme and unusual way. In some parts it seems like an independent main role… Yes, the music indeed plays a special part in this film. I wouldn’t call myself a techno freak. But this kind of music is important for this kind of film and setting. It is the only music known to me which can trigger such state of trance amongst the listeners both for the protagonists as well as the audience. We partially worked with isochromatic and binaural sounds which take the narcotic and hypnotic perception to the extremes. I have never seen this in a movie and I always wanted to try this out.