Film Archive

Schmitke

Czech Films 2014–2015 2015 / Schmitke / Czech Republic, Germany 2014

This graduate film by Štěpán Altrichter is a visually enchanting comedy mystery set in the Ore Mountains (Krušné Hory), which form a natural border between Germany and the Czech Republic. A level-headed engineer played by familiar German actor Peter Kurth arrives to repair a creaking old wind turbine. Out there in the misty woods he also goes in search of something else deep inside him.

Synopsis

Reticent engineer Julius Schmitke is a whizz at anything wind turbine-related. He sets off with his verbose colleague for the Czech side of the Ore Mountains in order to fix a creaking old wind turbine. Out there in the remote woodlands Schmitke senses something is calling out to him, something mysterious that has started to permeate his very being. “Some people call this the Czech Twin Peaks,” says debut director Štěpán Altrichter, “since, as in David Lynch’s show, strangers come to a small town where some sort of system is already in place and the locals aren’t very keen on the idea of intruders sticking their nose in their affairs.” The filmmaker cast Peter Kurth in the role of Schmitke who, apart from his theatre work, is familiar from the TV crime series “Crime Scene” (“Tatort”) and films by Andreas Dresen. In Schmitke Altrichter concocts an absurd Nordic atmosphere, taking his heroes into the barren mountains and observing their actions in statically depersonalised shots chilled with cold hues.

Šimon Šafránek

About the film

94 min / Color, DCP

Director Štěpán Altrichter / Screenplay Jan Fusek, Tomáš Končinský, Štěpán Altrichter podle povídky / based on a story by Tomáš Končinský / Dir. of Photography Cristian Pîrjol / Music Johannes Repka / Editor Phillip Wenning, Andrea Schumacher / Art Director Barbora Kačena / Producer Tomáš Vach, Jörg Trentmann, Radim Procházka / Production Produkce Radim Procházka / Coproduction Credo:Film / Cast Peter Kurth, Johann Jürgens, Helena Dvořáková, Jakub Žáček, Petr Vršek / Contact Produkce Radim Procházka / Distributor Artcam Films
www: www.schmitkefilm.com

About the director

Štěpán Altrichter (b. 1981, Brno) grew up in Prague and Southern Germany. He studied philosophy and psychology in Berlin, and later film direction at Prague’s FAMU and the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam. He has made several shorts, both documentaries and features. Schmitke is his feature film debut. The film was premiered at the Busan IFF in South Korea and won Best Debut at Cottbus in Germany in 2014.