Making of

Around the year 2000, Opel had the vision of building a large car centre in Rüsselsheim where customers could collect their cars themselves. A theme park was to be created around this centre, in which customers would be guided through the Opel brand world. The model was the VW car city in Wolfsburg. The heart of the Opel city was to be a state-of-the-art cinema, in which a single film was to be shown, shot with the brand’s image carrier: the Opel Speedster, a super-light sports car that Opel had just developed together with Lotus. What crazy times! Rainer Kaufmann, one of Germany’s most respected directors, told me at the time that he had just shot the Autostadt brand film for Bentley and the old bourgeois brand Opel was building a super-cool sports car with Lotus. Everything seemed possible…

Together with the production company Picture Planet, director Hans Horn developed the concept for an image film in which a hero was to save the heroine in three time loops with the help of the Opel Speedster. However, as Hans had to abandon the project for scheduling reasons, I took over the structure of his concept, streamlined it and focussed the story on the two characters and their fight against the forces of Shichsal.

Together with the production company SAM-Film, we finally shot the film in Berlin in autumn 2000 and completed it over the coming winter. Unfortunately, the quarterly figures for 2000/2001 were so poor that Opel’s management decided to discontinue not only the image film, but the entire theme park. Only the fact that Opel’s lawyers had determined that it would be cheaper to finish the film than to cancel it meant that we were able to get it through online and mixed. Opel’s clients didn’t even turn up to approve the film. I sat alone with the sound engineer during the final mix. We are the only two people who have ever seen this huge project in the cinema, for which it was once conceived.

People with little time can find the trailer here. The full film is below.