Once, filmmaker Konstantin Faigle felt like German's former national football coach Rudi Völler. He was "sick of eating shit." Loving his country and its language, he wondered why the German glass is always half-empty and never half-full. In one of the more comic films in the festival, Faigle analyses the collective German psychological and sociological depression. A chronic hypochondriac and diagnosed depressive himself, Faigle wants answers. What makes Germans German? "Are we depressed whiners? Or just plain crazy?" The Great Depression is as serious as it is ironic: half road movie, half tragicomedy, half Faust. In this calculation, three halves can add up to a funny, satisfying film. But the quest, and the questions remain: "There are other more depressed countries - Finland and Austria, for instance - but one symptom makes us Germans special. We are not just depressed, we observe our state of mind and get even more depressed by the greater picture." As father-to-be, Faigle refuses to have his child be born in a country suffering from collective depression. With his film he wishes to retrieve the German soul, if not to full blossom, then maybe to a few new leaves.
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