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Happiness Is a Warm Gun

Switzerland, Germany

2001

92 Min
Color
1.85:1
German
  • Currently 3.4/5 Stars.
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DIR Thomas Imbach

PROD Thomas Imbach

SCR Jürg Hassler, Peter Purtschert, Thomas Imbach

DP Jürg Hassler, Thomas Imbach

CAST Linda Olsansky, Herbert Fritsch

ED Thomas Imbach, Jürg Hassler

MUSIC Peter Bräker, Sir Henry

Locarno (International Competition), BAFICI (Foco Thomas Imbach), Berlinale (Perspektive Deutsches Kino)

Synopsis

Petra, the 1980’s “green queen” and peace activist, is shot in her sleep by her lover and political ally, former West German army general Gert. He kills himself shortly afterwards. Was it murder, or did she want that shot? What happens to Petra, from the time Gert’s bullet enters her skull to the moment it lodges in her brain and she dies? She experiences a flash-forward to the present time and wakes up in the glassy transit zone of an international airport. On her trip through this modern purgatory Petra struggles to unravel the meaning of the shot together with Gert and other figures from her life. In the explosive moment between life and death, she recognizes the force of her most absolute desires.

Director

Original

Thomas Imbach

Thomas Imbach is a Swiss maverick director, whose work is visual, edgy and performance driven. In 2007 he founded Okofilm Productions together with director/ producer Andrea Štaka. With Well Done (1994) and Ghetto (1997) he established his trademark audio-visual style based on a combination of cinema-verité camera-work and fast-paced computer controlled editing. His fiction feature films Happiness is a Warm Gun (which was nominated for the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2001), Lenz (2006) and I was a Swiss Banker (2007) all premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

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Watch Films by Thomas Imbach

By David Hudson on November 28, 2011

We’re showing films by the award-winning independent Swiss filmmaker for a full year.

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TERRAINS OF VIOLENCE

By Jimmy Sukeshw​ala on June 4, 2012

Happiness Is A Warm Gun is a search for meaning to the murder of Petra Kelly, the internationally celebrated German peace activist and environmentalist. The attitude that Thomas Imbach adopts is cynical…  read review

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