Der Todesking
1h 15m
The second feature film from German provocateur Jörg Buttgereit, director of Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2, Der Todesking (The King of Death) presents seven suicides across seven days of the week.
As a chain letter from the self-proclaimed Brotherhood of the 7th Day circulates encouraging its recipients to end their lives, a series of grim murder-suicides unfold. In one vignette, a young woman massacres a room of concert-goers before turning the gun on herself; in another, a man, driven to madness by some unspecified mental disturbance, repeatedly slams his head into a wall before collapsing in a pool of his own blood… These are just some of depictions of death and despair that make up the tortured fabric of Der Todesking.
Regarded by many as director Jörg Buttgereit's most accomplished work, Der Todesking is an existential masterpiece – a powerfully haunting howl of rage from one of the genre's most underrated filmmakers.