‘ZERO KILLED’ Q&A WITH DIRECTOR MICHAL KOSAKOWSKI @ RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

See the interview on youtube.com

Since 1996 Michal Kosakowski has been asking people, from all walks of life, about their murder fantasies, turning their dark confessions into short films on the condition that his subjects act in them, allowing them to live out their fantasies. This film brings those shorts together with interviews from his ‘murderers’ and ‘victims.’

There’s something for everyone in the grim realisations of their homicidal daydreams, some are darkly comic, some brutal and drab, there’s torture, poisoning, assassination, even a philosophical suicide. Kosakowski has succeeded, often eerily so, in creating depictions of murder that teeter perilously between fantasy and snuff. Amongst this the contributions from his participants ruminate on the simple desire to kill, how it can become intermingled with daily frustrations and what would drive someone to perhaps make the fantasy a reality.

Scenarios vary, from a farmer musing about the character required to kill a sheep, something he has to do on a daily basis, to a soldier pondering the justification for their actions, or the seemingly universal desire for murderous revenge if someone harmed your children. Kosakowski tantalisingly keeps his subject’s careers anonymous, leaving the viewer to create their own little fantasies about what they do for a living and how that may have influenced their make-believe murder.

A strangely playful film, this is in turns a riveting, wince-inducing succession of nightmare scenarios and at once an arch, wry look at the cruellest fantasies that ordinary people harbour.