Like the first two parts of this Haneke trilogy, Der siebente Kontinent and Benny’s Video, the basis of is a violent action without a motive that can adequately be explained psychologically or sociologically. On Christmas Eve 1993 a nineteen-year-old student kills a number of complete strangers without any apparent reason. Haneke does not try to explain the youth’s psychology, but shows the world of images in which we live – for instance the war in former-Yugoslavia and the Michael Jackson affair. Images that are exploited and trivialised every day. The film tries to provide a cross section of society and follows twelve different characters while the victims and the murderer home in on their fatal encounter.
