A young policeman encounters his monstrous alter ego in this nightmarish thriller written & directed by Till Kleinert.
DOP: Martin Hanslmayr
Camera Operator: Jide Tom Akinleminu
Germany 2014, 80min, HD
www.samurai-film.de
SYNOPSIS
A wolf wanders the woods on the edge of a small village on the German-Polish border. Jakob, a young police officer, is tracking him, but senses something more in the darkness. He comes across a man, or something akin to one, with a wild gaze and a wiry body. He wears a dress and swings a katana, a Japanese sword. When the stranger tries to tempt Jakob into joining his crusading against the village, the latter must give more than his all to prevent the destruction that his enigmatic admirer wreaks first among garden gnomes and guard dogs, then upon the inhabitants of the village. In the dawn following this tar-black night nothing is as it was. And Jacob has to learn what it means to step out of line.
DER SAMURAI is a nightmarish thriller about a personal liberation. What begins as a mysterious but nonetheless reality-grounded narrative takes on ever more fantastic aspects. Following the award-winning shorts HUNDEFUTTER [Dog food] (Short-Film Prize, achtung berlin 2007), COWBOY (Iris Prize, Cardiff 2008) and KOKON [Cocoon] (German Short Film Prize 2009), Till Kleinert now makes his feature-film debut with DER SAMURAI, which is also his diploma work for the German Film and Television Academy, Berlin (dffb).