The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.
Direction
Liechti transforms forensic report into hypnotic ritual.
Sound
Insect drone becomes character — maddening, then strangely beautiful.
Editing
Fiction and documentary collapse until you forget which is which.
Director
Peter Liechti
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on Robert Walser's writer friend Robert Stamm's novella, which fictionalized the 1984 discovery of a real Swiss hiker's mummified body — a man who'd documented his own starvation in a diary found beside him.
Peter Mettler's narration connects this to his own 'Gambling, Gods and LSD' — the film is part of an unofficial Swiss trilogy on transcendence through extremity. Liechti died in 2014, making this his most enduring provocation.
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