"Two older actors from Bern, a tragicomical pair, visit their erstwhile director to convince him of the merits of a new film idea – a fiery, colorful work with beautiful women in Africa, a sequel to a successful film they made together ten years earlier ('The Silence of the Men'). After odysseys and breakdowns in the nocturnal, wintry Apennines, where they get lost in parts of an erotic film and a philosophical monastery film, they finally reach, on foot and exhausted, the director. The latter has withdrawn into stony and melancholy Umbria and is more concerned with asceticism, eschewing consumption, and decline. He despises the mainstream and persuades the two to act in a Franciscan film titled 'St. Francis Birds Tour'. In monk's clothes, they are led to the rehearsals in the Sibylline woods, but there the trap falls shut, the director disappears, and the two wander, lost, in the labyrinthine forest. They scream and scream." Clemens Klopfenstein
"Philosophizing with film: this is how one could characterize Clemens Klopfenstein's 'St. Francis Birds Tour', whereby 'philosophizing' is to be understood in a very broad sense. Reflecting and brooding are as much a part of it as are tomfoolery and everyday conversation as a form of thinking out loud, which can result in some realization or another – or not. The medium of film is thereby not merely an instrument of documentation, but at the same time also a means of stimulation and itself in turn the object of often ironically broken reflection and examination... 'St. Francis Birds Tour' is a home movie and costume film, an experimental film and genre cinema; there is no difference between the trivial and the sublime – the stigmata that, so to speak, ennoble the designated portrayer of Francis of Assisi, Max, are made from the blood of cheap horror films." Thomas Allenbach
Production: Ombra-Films, Bevagna/Italien
Screenplay: Clemens Klopfenstein
Production Design: Annelie Buechner; Serena Kiefer
Composer: Ben Jeger und Polo Hofers Schmetterband
Editors: Remo Legnazzi, Lorenz Klopfenstein
Cast: Polo Hofer, Max Rüdlinger, Sabine Timoteo, Mathias Gnädinger, Lukas und Clemens Klopfenstein, Special guest: Ursula Andress
Format/screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.66, Color
Running time: 88 min., 24 frames/sec.
Language: Swiss-German
