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SNOWFLAKE (SCHNEEFLOCKCHEN, 2017)

Directed by Adolfo Kolmerer & William James
Written by Arend Remmers
Starring Reza Brojerdi, Erkan Acar, Xenia Assenza, David Masterson, Alexander Schubert, Adrian Topol, Gedeon Burkhard, Eskindir Tesfay, Selam Tadese, Martin Goeres, Guido Broscheit, Joachim Paul Assböck, Clara Aurich, Bruno Eyron, David Gant, Angela Hobrig, Mehmet Kurtulus, Hussi Kutlucan, Sven Martinek, Folke Paulsen, Katja Wagner, Antonio Wannek, Mathis Landwehr as the Hyper-Electric Man, & Judith Hoersch as Snowflake!
Find out more about this film here, @@schneefloeckchenDERFILM, and on Facebook here

I am always a fan of films about writers. Being a writer myself, having a window into how other people are able to sit down and knock those ideas out of one’s head is always interesting as I often struggle with doing just that. SNOWFLAKE isn’t as much about the writing process as it is about the responsibility a writer has after the writing has been put on the page. What happens when the characters you create have become so real that they are able to interact with you? And what happens when they can see the text too and don’t like with the fate you have written for them? These fun and abstract questions are all over the vicious, gory, and absolutely hilarious romp called SNOWFLAKE aka SCHNEEFLOCKCHEN in its own German language.

A pair of murderers, their guardian angel maned Snowflake, a Nazi clime boss, a woman seeking revenge, a superhero with electrical powers, and a dentist who seems to possess a script that stars all of them makes up the bizarre and vibrant cast of SNOWFLAKE. As the pair of murderers (played by Reza Brojerdi and Erkan Acar) find out the existence of the dentist and his script, they force him to write and rewrite the ending to their liking. Everyone is seeking revenge against everyone and they all feel like they could converge and explode at any given moment. Along the way, they meet more colorful and diabolical characters. It all makes sense in a twisted way.

While at times the film feels as if it simply exists to toss out one offbeat character at you after another, I do think it should be recognized that writer Arend Remmers and co-directors Adolfo Kolmerer & William James are able to keep the entire thing rolling without spinning out of control. They flip between characters and storylines, and even go meta and venture outside of the actual storyline without letting it go off the rails. Given the scope and amount of moving parts of this film, this is a true achievement.

What really endeared me to this film was the meta aspect as the dentist ends up writing and rewriting the film as he gets to know the characters he has created. In many ways, this is a fun look at the writing process as a whole. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings and if there are any writers out there, they are going to find a lot to like about the brutal honesty this film is able to exude in its convoluted and pretzeltine storyline. This is a film about creation, failure, setting a goal, and then being able to refigure it. It’s a story not just about guns, gangsters, torture, angels, murder, and mayhem. It’s also about working through life with a plan and then being able to rewrite that plan or being a victim of your own rigidity.

But it’s also about blood and bullets and carnage. There’s a lot of that in SNOWFLAKE. The red stuff flies all over and the filmmakers make it all look beautiful. Scenes of the Hyper-Electric Man taking on thugs or the Angel spattered in blood or simply seeing our murderers in the center of it all eating falafels in the middle of a mass shooting are all standouts in this love letter to violence. Sure, this film owes a lot to large cast films with twisty storylines such as PULP FICTION and RABIES, but it still is able to exude and energy that makes it feel alive, electric, and new. SNOWFLAKE is a wonderful little ode to word-making and bloodletting and you shouldn’t miss it!