“But we didn’t expect people to faint”: the big FILMSTARTS interview about the intense gangster thriller “Schock”

Dark, atmospheric genre cinema from Germany – far too few people dare to do that anymore, and that is why it is particularly gratifying that in the case of “Schock” (in German cinemas since this week) something very strong emerged from it: originally they were Good friends Daniel Rocket Siegel (“In Jail”) and Denis Moschitto (“Rheingold”) only took over directing together – but then Moschitto stepped in at short notice as the lead. He now embodies the doctor Bruno, who has lost his license to practice medicine due to a history of drugs – and is now illegally out and about at night in Cologne to help anyone who cannot or does not want to visit a doctor or hospital regularly. .

However, he becomes caught between the fronts of a gang war that also involves his brother-in-law Giuli (Fahri Yardım) and a shady lawyer (Anke Engelke). The more he tries to swim free, the deeper Bruno gets sucked into the whole mess – until he finally loses a finger and treats the protruding bone in a rather unusual way…

FILM START:

Daniel Rocket Seal: With a few exceptions, we received good feedback. Everyone said it was going to be hard, and it was, but we didn’t get kicked out, in fact everyone was ready for it.

Dennis Moschitto: It was really surprising. Filmmaking is always difficult – and we had a particularly difficult time. But in many places it was surprisingly easy; I think this was just the right time. We often heard: “Finally genre!” Our editor at WDR also said he always wanted to do genre. The actors and actresses were all very happy. We have not convinced everyone, but we have convinced the key figures.

FILM START:

Daniel Rocket Seal: Actually not that difficult. We did several camera tests for this, mainly because we had so little light during the shoot. For the tech nerds: we shot with the extremely sensitive Sony Venice. This allowed us to make do with very little artificial light, which we would otherwise have had to filter out somehow afterwards. For example, when our main character is doing Rambazamba in the pharmacy, it was so dark that you couldn’t see anything with the naked eye. But as soon as everyone turned on their headlamps, there were suddenly thirty people in the room that you had never seen before. This creates a very unique atmosphere. There was a lot going on in the sorting in terms of appearance and texture, but I could spend half an evening going over the details. The most important thing is: we have tried to capture everything on site the way we want it.

FILM START:

Dennis Moschitto: Have you ever heard us talk about this? That’s a very nice question, because it really gets on our nerves. We already used specific street names in the script. It didn’t say, ‘Bruno is in the car, his eyebrows are twitching.’ It said: ‘Bruno drives through Bochumer Straße.’ If he gets on somewhere and gets off somewhere, then we have driven the routes ourselves. Therefore, the time it takes him to get there is at least 90 percent correct, I would say.

FILM START:

Daniel Rocket Seal: That was also very important to us. Labyrinthine Cologne is a very narrow city. There is one-way traffic everywhere – and if you go the wrong way you have to drive halfway through the city to go back the other way. And time and time again…

Dennis Moschitto: … The Rhine …

Daniel Rocket Seal: Precisely! All roads lead across the Rhine and back again. That’s why I think Cologne is the right city for the film. It is this limitation and the fact that you often do not know exactly how large the rooms are in which Bruno moves. Everything is narrow and confusing, labyrinthine. […] Yet it is extremely difficult to film in Cologne because everyone is fed up: the city, the residents, actually everyone. So you get a lot of pressure – and it’s all incredibly expensive.

Dennis Moschitto: There are also some worn motifs. If you just come to Cologne and say: I want to film here, then if you are unlucky you will first be offered the 33 motifs on which 500 crime scenes have already been filmed. Avoiding this is not that easy. There’s a prefabricated housing project there where everything is filmed, because it’s the only settlement where the executives say, ‘Yes, okay, you can film here.’ So everything is filmed there – and that’s what we were offered. We looked at it and weren’t happy with it. So we just kept going, asked people to stay and watch, and in the end we got lucky.

FILM START:

Dennis Moschitto: You are not alone in this. The scene caused some violent reactions, but not only these. We had to interrupt our premiere screening at the Munich Film Festival after ten minutes because an audience member collapsed. When this happened again at another screening, this time because of the grating scene you mentioned, we were surprised.

Daniel Rocket Seal: Of course we also wanted to explore the boundaries, and in that respect ‘Schock’ lives up to its name and the genre. But we didn’t expect people to suddenly faint. That was not our intention either.

FILM START:

Denis Moschitto: Of course we watched films and talked about them. But we didn’t really have role models. Lately the comparison with ‘Drive’ by Nicolas Winding Refn has been discussed a lot.

FILM START:

Dennis Moschitto: I like that. I understand you want to find a parallel with ‘Drive’, but I don’t see it. I really like the ‘Pusher’ trilogy – especially the second part. It’s one of the best gangster films out there. So if I looked anywhere, that was it, but the Safdie brothers definitely played a role for us as well.

FILM START:

Dennis Moschitto: Of course it’s always difficult to say that about your own film, but I believe that “Schock” is unique! It really shouldn’t exist as it is – and if you love the genre but have lost hope that Gene from Germany is possible, then you need to watch this film. Our mission was just that: convince people that a German film is great!

Daniel Rocket Seal: I would also add that the film is worth seeing because it challenges you as a viewer. You have to do something, you have to tolerate something, you may have to think for yourself, you have to recognize hints. You have to decide whether Bruno still falls within a moral or ethical framework. You have to want to see that in it – and then the film is something special for an audience that doesn’t just want to be showered.

The very humorous conversation with the directors of “Schock” lasted more than half an hour in total – and if you want, you can listen to it in full on our podcast “Anzeigeliebe”:

And in case you haven’t noticed yet: for us, “Schock” is an absolute must – and certainly not just because German genre cinema should be much more supported anyway. This is the conclusion of our detailed criticism: “The film tells the story of a former doctor who, with concentration and a stylish sense of well-developed, erupting genre violence, ventures too far into the night side..”