I’m at the Locarno Festival with my filmmaker. At midnight I say to myself, now you go out again like before.
I’m in Locarno because I’ve been invited to write the world premiere of our thriller “Serviam”. It’s a bit of a déjà vu – between Cannes 2003 and Karlsbad 2004 I went along with the traveling circus of the European film festival. When I was fourteen months old, I didn’t understand what holds this world together at its core: I spoke to my German flirt about the star director from Moscow, who had so deeply impressed me in Sofia with his commitment to marital fidelity. Lo and behold, in that same Sofia he had slept with my German flirt!
Eighteen years later we are in the competition of the Locarno A-Festival. It starts out disappointing for my filmmaker: instead of being lifted into a cab at Milan airport, she has to wait three and a half hours with her husband and children for the next festival shuttle – which turns out to be a Swiss Postbus. In the festival hotel, when my card is pre-charged, I swallow 1142 francs for two nights. The room overlooks four five monotonous rows of six-story apartment blocks from the seventies. Above all, German-speaking Swiss vacation in Locarno. I don’t know exactly why.