Canadian Premiere
Official Selection Bergen International Film Festival, Margaret Mead Film Festival
SHOOTING OURSELVES was filmed entirely on the Berlin set of 'Situation Rooms', a show by German theatre legends, Rimini Protokoll, who are frequent visitors at the Goethe-Institut Toronto. Last year, the Luminato Festival in partnership with the Goethe-Institut presented this award-winning multi-player video installation to a sold-out house.
Featuring a rare ensemble of people whose lives are intimately connected to weapons, SHOOTING OURSELVES is set against a backdrop of increasing global violence. The protagonists came to dramatize their personal experiences – from underground missile factories to the most highly contested borders of the world. They create a new type of immersive theatre where audience members play roles guided by films on handheld devices.
Step through one door and you’re in a street demonstration in Homs, Syria. The next door leads you to a cubicle in San Diego where a drone operator drops bombs on villagers in Waziristan, Pakistan.
Trailer:
US film director Christine Cynn continues the exploration of performance and violence begun in THE ACT OF KILLING (which she co-directed), juxtaposing dramatic reenactments with unscripted moments of private reflection and backstage conversation between protagonists, from heated exchanges on “collateral damage” to banter about diplomatic picnics at Osama Bin Laden's abandoned compound.
The Berlin-based collective Rimini Protokoll, consisting of Stefan Kaegi, Helgard Haug, and Daniel Wetzel, are ranked among the inventors of reality theatre without actors, engaging their audience in interactive experiences or letting citizens reenact their own stories. The trio focuses on the frontier between reality and fiction, using theatre and technology to create unusual perspectives on reality.
In association with Germany @ Canada 2017
Partners from Immigration to Innovation
