Headstand

A short-circuit action as a result of a stupid misunderstanding. That's all it takes. A distraught mother picks up the phone, and after a brief interlude at the police station, her son Markus is admitted to a psychiatric institution. Inside, at any rate, one is incredibly quick. Whether and when the way back to normal life can be started is left to the judgment of the "experts". "How one got away with life purely by chance" is the precise subtitle of this in many respects truly remarkable film by Ernst Josef Lauscher, which is not content to tell the medical history of innocent victim Markus Dorn (future Oscar winner Christoph Waltz) with dry objectivity. On the contrary, KOPFSTAND is an incredibly lively and multi-layered portrait of an adolescent who nevertheless does not perish. WOCHENPRESSE

"You can learn a great deal about a society by seeing how it deals with its sick, with its disturbed, with its outsiders." ERNST JOSEF LAUSCHER