"Dreileben" by Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, Christoph Hochhäusler

 

At the 2011 Berlinale, the exceptional German production Dreileben celebrated its world premiere, on April 3 it can be seen in a one-time presentation at the Austrian Film Museum. The three directors Dominik Graf, Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhäusler, each a central figure in his generation, have together created a narrative universe around a single event which plays out in three separate feature films. One city, one summer, one crime: a convict’s escape from hospital. Graf's Komm mir nicht nach is about a female police psychologist who meets old friends at the scene of the crime. In Petzold's Etwas Besseres als den Tod, a young hospital worker experiences a love story without any perspective. And in Hochhäusler's Eine Minute Dunkel, a dogged cop on the hunt starts to doubt the guilt of the escapee. These lifelines touch, overlap, intersect, cut each other off and occasionally intertwine, revealing "subterranean" relationships. Three films, three styles, three stories, made possible through the joint effort of three German television stations who are offering a rare space for complex forms of storytelling.