Genosse Münchhausen

Farmer Puste tills half an acre of land in the Capitalist west, the other half, separated by barbed wire, belongs to the state agricultural collective: a battle between two systems that finds expression in brilliant dramatic tricks. Puste thus crash-lands over the Soviet Union as a “weather observer”, heads to Moscow and then almost to Venus, before finally ending up in Sylt and back to that half acre of land, albeit the other one this time. From the fanatic need for overachievement on the part of the state agricultural collective via omnipresent espionage all the way to manned space travel, everything that the tabloid headlines of the time had to offer is referenced here. GENOSSE MÜNCHHAUSEN is a film of its time. Cabaret star Wolfgang Neuss, who wrote and directed the film in addition to taking on the leading role, explodes the partition of Germany by way of the legend of Münchhausen. A grotesque episodic journey which always also has elements of Brechtian learning plays shine through. (Olaf Saeger)