AUF DER STRECKE

A department store security guard sits behind his monitors, watching the saleswoman in the book department, with whom he is secretly in love without finding the courage to speak to her. When he witnesses, on the train, a man he takes for a rival being beaten up, he fails to intervene – with fatal consequences. Reto Caffi’s short film “Auf der Strecke” (Germany/Switzerland 2007) tells, in thirty minutes, of jealousy, failure to render assistance and the guilt the guard must live with afterwards – and of the woman to whom he now, more than ever, cannot say what he saw.

The film was made as the graduation project of the Swiss director Reto Caffi at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, shot in Swiss German and Standard German. It won the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, the Student Academy Award and the 2008 Swiss Film Award for best short film, and was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. “Auf der Strecke” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2008, in the Spezial Deutschland section.

Shown at the 2008 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2008 · Film Archive