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FESTIVALS France / Germany

One Minute of Darkness (Three Lives): an escaped convict in the forest

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German director Christoph Hochhäusler has been a regular at major festivals since his debut with This Very Moment in the Berlinale Forum 2003, followed by his two selections in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes (Low Profile in 2005 and The City Below [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christoph Hochhäusler
film profile
]
in 2010). His fourth feature, One Minute of Darkness (Three Lives), is no exception to the rule: in competition yesterday at Les Arcs European Film Festival, the film was indeed unveiled at this year’s Berlin Film Festival (in the Forum section) before screening out of competition at Locarno.

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A sort of set exercise as part of a trilogy looking at the same subject (an escaped murderer) from different angles (the two other directors involved are Christian Petzold and Dominik Graf), One Minute of Darkness (Three Lives) reveals itself to be a genre movie with a classic storyline (lots of chases, survival in the forest, suspense, a police counter-investigation…) steered towards auteur cinema by a calm pace, beautiful directing and a laconic atmosphere of weariness that furrows the faces of the two main characters: the murderer (Stefan Kurt) and policeman (Eberhard Kirchberg).

Turning his back on spectacularism and psychology, the director particularly shines with some superb scenes in the forest where the escaped convict roams. This, in an atmosphere that heightens the character’s borderline solitude (he talks to himself and more or less regresses) punctuated by encounters that are avoided or not (with some hikers, a young female runaway, police beats, picnickers). At the same time, the policeman in charge of the investigation thinks back obsessively to the crime for which the escaped man was convicted: a murder recorded on a surveillance camera, but with the crucial minute missing.

Preferring to linger on the intense faces of the hunter and the hunted man, Hochhäusler unhurriedly moves the plot forward, disclosing elements of explanation little by little (the murderer’s past, the policeman’s state of health) and suggesting a reflection on the themes of stigmatisation ("it’s the monster from the television"), miscarriages of justice and passing time. From the shooting galleries to the sweeping view of the valley where nestles the small town of Thuringia where the drama is set, the director’s camera hits the right note and manages to make this "banal" crime story into a visually accomplished film where silence triumphs over noise.

Produced by Heimat Film, One Minute of Darkness (Three Lives) is sold internationally by Bavaria.

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(Translated from French)

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