Chrigu

Jan Gassmann, Christian Ziörjen
Switzerland
2007

Let’s make a movie together, I’ll just drop out at some point.

88", 35mm
Color, Swiss German with English subtitles

about the film

Chrigu is the nickname given by his Swiss family to Christian, one of the creators of this unusual documentary. A bright, exuberant young filmmaker, brimming with plans for his future, he is diagnosed at age 21 with a tumour in an advanced stage in his neck. As he begins to undergo radical chemotherapy, Chrigu decides that he will also film this chronicle of his fight for life. Ultimately it becomes, in his words, a “Yes to life. Not perhaps my life in particular. But yes to life.”. The documentary shows excerpts from the films Christian began to make at the age of 16, in which he documented parties, a trip to India, and concerts he attended. We get to know his family and the members of the hip-hop band Mundartisten, whose music videos he directed. Co-director Jan Gassmann accompanied his best friend throughout his experience. The result is a film about life, not death.

about the director

Jan Gassmann was born in 1983 in Switzerland. He began filmmaking at 15 and joined the young filmmakers’ society VideoGang. It was with them that in 2001 he filmed Jan in Ecuador. After a few years in television, he switched to documentary filmmaking. Gassmann now works as an editor and studies Documentary Film at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF) in Munich.

Christian Ziörjen, was born in 1982 in Switzerland. He worked for two years as part of VideoGang during which he made his first documentary Mit anderen Augen. For Imaginate, a film about Switzerland and Ecuador, he won the Young Digital Freestyle Award. He produced and directed music videos for the band Mundartisten. In his film Mit Kanonen auf Krebse, he follows the process of his own chemotherapy treatment.

awards

2007 Berlin Film Festival: Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam/IDFA
Dokfest München
Shangai Film Festival

screenings

February 14 Thursday, 12:30 PM AFM Fitaş Beyoğlu 2

February 22 Friday, 12:30 PM AFM Fitaş Beyoğlu 2

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