Achternbusch

Cult director Herbert Achternbusch has directed nearly thirty films and ten plays, acted, written novels and essays and he also paints, yet he remains an inscrutable man for his audience. Andi Niessner, who formed part of the production team on two of his latest major features, allows a glimpse behind the veil in Achternbusch. Achternbusch, who stopped making films in 2002 despite great respect, left a very idiosyncratic oeuvre. In it, he reveals himself to be an uncompromising and unconventional film maker, with an explicit love-hate relationship with his birthplace in Bavaria. In the documentary, Achternbusch speaks openly about his parents, religion, his childhood and the early years of his creative career. Niessner travels with him to places he loves and intercuts these excursions with personal memories by his children and old friends Margarethe von Trotta, Gabi Geist, Dieter Dorn and Sepp Bierbichler. Achternbusch in turn speaks about colleague directors such as Schlöndorf, Von Trotta and Herzog. Slowly but surely, the partly self-imposed loneliness in which he works – having been in the past a frequent guest at the International Film Festival Rotterdam – acquires more relief.