Fünferfilm UG

Marion experiences a day. It could be yesterday, but not tomorrow, because at the end of the day she is dead, stumbled in a moment of routine.

Martin and Constanze retreat to a secluded holiday home in northeastern Germany for his 60th birthday - he yearns for fishing and fine dining, she a lavish city party. En route they meet Gaby, the local innkeeper. Joined by Martin’s old friend and his young mistress Lene, they toast and rejoice, until a stranger knocks, pleading in an unknown language for help.

La empresa is a strange creature of a most ambiguous nature: a fiction film about documentary filmmaking as fiction filmmaking, and what it all does to a region’s economy as well as a collective psychology. Or is it? Isn’t it more to the point to say that... But before we get lost here, let’s state what La empresa talks about: how the caminata nocturna, the illegal crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States, was turned into a business that ranges from four-hour night-time tours for tourists out for a sick thrill to reenactments for film and television crews. The latter, of course, is at the core of André Siegers’ casually ironic look at this economy of disaster. When the Germans arrive in town, they meet a workforce already in place and willing to play to any national stereotype – as the French seem to get other kicks out of presenting the caminata nocturna than the Netflix internationals.

Is it possible to get close to someone who sees their sole task in life in losing themself in the parts they play? How can a film portrait be created when every image only contributes to further fictionalization? Who is facing each other when the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred? Katharina Pethke looks back to dissect the past and her contradictory feelings for the celebrated actor Philipp Hochmair, following the lines of her own artistic and personal doubts.