The 120 Days of Bottrop

Superficially a film about the sheer hectic pace, the ugly economy of filmmaking, a German Day as a counterpart to Truffaut's American Night. At the same time, it is a melancholy swan song to the German film of the late 60s and 70s, to which Schlingensief has always referred. A farewell to yesterday. In a series of allusions, points and quotations, the film is also a retrospective on German film history as such, which Schlingensief gives the temporary appearance of having no future. As expected, 12O TAGE VON BOTTROP is confusing - also or especially for its characters -, thematically overloaded, eccentric to the point of excess, but also funny. A bunch of former Fassbinder actors (Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab, Volker Spengler) plan to make the last new German film - a remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini's scandalous film Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom.