De noche los gatos son pardos

Nachtkatzen

by Valentin Merz

Valentin is shooting a queerly gaudy piece of heritage fetish erotica. Then he's suddenly gone, and the cops are called in. A crew member from Spain has seen him in a dream lying dead in a forest, so it's okay that the police start investigating the case as a murder mystery. Especially as Valentin's corpse is found where the Spaniard envisioned him to be, only to vanish again. What's left for the poor cops other than pretend there's work to do, because the show must go on? Meanwhile in Mexico, or on the Other Side...

If you think that sounds weird, De noche los gatos son pardos is actually much weirder: dreamy, impulsive (one could also say 'coherently illogical'), shamelessly artsy, and heaven bent on surprising its viewers. Every character is named after its actor. The team embarked on this trip sans screenplay, trusting in their shared improvisation skills; all they knew is that the film's main characters would change several times, and therefore its tone, which includes everything from zombie flick to magic realism – think Potocki's Saragossa Manuscript or the Arabian Nights' Entertainment. Or don't think, at least not too much, but listen and see and marvel, and get lost in this forest of pleasures and delights!

Olaf Möller (IFFR)

DIRECTING

Valentin Merz

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Robin Mognetti

EDITING

Andreaa Vescan

SOUND

Miguel Moraes Cabral

COSTUMES

Dogartzi Magunagoicoechea

PRODUCTION

Valentin Merz
Marie Lanne-Chesnot

WITH

Robin Mognetti
Valentin Merz
Dogartzi Magunagoicoechea
Jean-Charles de Quillacq
Maxi Schmitz
Natalia Portnoy
Mara Thurnheer
Bishop Black

FESTIVALS (a selection)

75° Locarno Film Festival
46a Mostra Internacional del Cinema de Sao Paulo
63rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival
19° Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo
28e Chéries-Chéris Paris
20th Rome Independent Film Festival
52nd International Film Festival Rotterdam
58. Solothurner Filmtage
9th Berlin Critics' Week
11e La Fête du Slip Lausanne
20° Zinegoak Bilbao
2nd OutFilm Festival Poznan
52nd Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival
27° Queersicht Bern
6th Blonde Cobra Queer and Experimental Film Festival Cologne

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Fiction, 2K, 110 min. Color / 1.66:1 / 5.1 Dolby Sound Language: French, English, Spanish, German