Check out the uncensored ZERO KILLED participant statements in the latest issue of Shoppinghour Magazine Issue 10 – Feast of Listen. Thanks to Peter Eramian!

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Shoppinghour Magazine

Published by Shoppinghour Magazine (2013)
112 Pages, 31 x 23 cm, Paperback, £6.00

by Hal C F Astell | Apocalypse Later, Feb 11, 2013

This film was an official selection at Phoenix FearCon V in Scottsdale in 2012. It’s not your usual horror movie that evolves out of an art installation, but Zero Killed began life in 2007 at the Lothringer13 gallery in Munich and, sure enough, it’s something rather different. It’s a cross between documentary and fake snuff film, but with an opposing emphasis to movies such as Man Bites Dog or Long Pigs. For a decade, beginning in 1996, filmmaker Michał Kosakowski asked a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds about their murder fantasies, then provided the gruesome means by which they could act them out in front of the camera. Kosakowski delivered everything needed to turn their fantasies into reality, if only in a fictional way, except one thing: he set the condition that they had to act in their little pictures themselves. Then, a decade on, he returned to his subjects, spread across five central European countries, to interview them about their experiences and how they might have been changed by them. Read the rest of this page »

We are honoured to be published in the Austrian Cult Magazine Rokko’s Adventures, No.12. Director Michal Kosakowski talks with Daniel Krcal on his film “Zero Killed”.

Rokko’s Adventures
‘Nix Tot’ – Interview with Michal Kosakowski (PDF in German)

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 was the rescheduled Flaherty NYC screening of Zero Killed, by Polish-born, Berlin-based artist Michal Kosakowski. The director and two of the film’s subjects, Sergio Figueroa and Dorit Oitzinger, were in attendance for a post-screening discussion with moderator Andy P. Smith. Zero Killed weaves staged murder fantasies together with interviews with those who thought them up. The film is based on a video installation comprised of 49 shorts in which subjects enact their own violent scenarios. For Kosakowski, constructing a film from the installation offered a way to transport the idea to a medium more accessible to a larger audience. Read the rest of this page »

by Elias Savada | Film Threat, Jan 29, 2013

Lord knows why I’ve been sitting on the DVD that German director Michael Kosakowski handed me at the Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival last October. It played at AFI’s Silver Spring (Maryland) theater at the midnight show on October 12th (I was too tired to stay awake that night), and has had numerous screenings since (including it’s NYC Halloween premiere postponed courtesy of Hurricane Sandy). Earlier this week Cult Epics, a Los Angeles company owned by Nico B., acquired the U.S. and Canadian distribution rights, and a theatrical release here will be in April, followed by a DVD release on June 18th.

Anyway, the film handles the director’s penchant, since 1996, of “asking people with different backgrounds about their murder fantasies.” Hmmm, seems interesting/controversial in light of the recent uproar about gun control in the U.S.A. Kosakowski not only inquired about these reveries, but offered them a chance to stage them as films. Weird? Yup. Oh, he had one condition. They had to act in the films themselves…. Read the rest of this page »

Chopping spree – ‘Tis the season for ghouls and gore at Another Hole in the Head film fest

by Cheryl Eddy | San Francisco Bay Guardian, Nov. 27, 2012

Closing night looks to be a decidedly less festive affair, with Austrian director Michal Kosakowski’s unsettling Zero Killed — a feature film spun from his video installation and short film project, Fortynine. From 1996 to 2006, Kosakowski interviewed people about their murder fantasies, then used the tales (suicide bombings, school shootings, dog attacks, dinner-party poisonings, stabbings, shoving people into traffic or letting them slip off cliffs, etc.) as short-film inspiration, starring the storyteller as either perpetrator or victim.

A haunting musical score ups the creep factor, as Kosakowski tracks down each participant (many, but not all, are actors by trade) to interview them about their specific fantasies and other troubling topics, like revenge, torture, and “What is evil?” Zero Killed is a uniquely disturbing mix of fiction and documentary, cutting between horrific, blood-soaked vignettes and clinical talking-head interviews — often featuring the same subject.

Read the review on sfbg.com

IndieFest’s Another Hole in the Head Sets the Table for Its 9th Gory Season

by Jackson Scarlett | 7x7SF, Nov. 29, 2012

The macabre closing night film of this year’s HoleHead is, by technical description, a documentary–and not of the Tobe Hooper variety either. Pairing staged footage of homicidal fantasies told to him by interviewees (on the condition that they act in them as either as the murderer or victim) with years-later decompressions on subjects like torture, the military, and media dominance, German director Michal Kosakowski’s film plays out like a grim riff on Michael Apted’s Up series. Ranging from absurd bloodbaths to chilling snuff films, the most effective vignettes play out in stark counterpoint to the interviews, adding a heightened meaning to the necessarily political talk on display.

Read the review on 7×7.com

Nothing too violent for Hole in the Head fest

by Hugh Hart | San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 2, 2012

Another Hole in the Head Film Festival screens loads of murder and mutilation, but audiences tend to be a jovial bunch, according to founder George Kaskanlian Jr. “It’s kind of like … a reunion every year,” he says. “A lot of people know each other and feel comfortable screaming, saying stupid stuff and having a good time.” This year’s edition, continuing through next Sunday at the Roxie, includes “G-String Horror” (Wednesday), shot by Charles Webb at the old Sid Grauman movie palace in San Francisco. The festival also presented “The Killing Games,” rejected by the Edmonton International Film Festival for being too graphic. Does Kaskanlian draw the line at extreme screen violence? “There is no line,” he says. “People know what they’re getting when they come to the festival. If a movie is too gory, we’ll make it a late-night screening.”

Closing-night film “Zero Killed” pushes that envelope. “People get interviewed about their murder fantasies and then they re-enact them,” Kaskanlian says. “When I was watching it for the first time … I got pretty weirded out because I thought it was real. ‘Zero Killed’ was pretty crazy. I thought, ‘I’ve got to put this in the festival.’ ”

Read the review on sfgate.com

by Peter Wong | Beyond Chron, Nov 29, 2012

Michal Kosakowski’s festival closer “Zero Killed” rightfully disturbs those with pat answers to the mass shootings reported on America’s nightly news.

Since 1996, Kosakowski has filmed enactments of people’s murder fantasies. The director’s only caveat is that the fantasist performs onscreen as either a killer or a victim. These homicide enactments utilize everything from poisoning to mass school shootings. Excerpts from these short films get paired with semi-classical music and present day interviews with the film participants regarding the intersection between killing another human being and society.

True to the title of Kosakowski’s film, nobody actually dies in these staged enactments. Yet the blood sprays and brutal shootings depicted in these murder fantasies will raise doubts in viewers’ minds.
Are these homicide fantasists a danger to society? If one were to judge by these fantasists’ onscreen interviews, none of their faces display mental illness or sociopathic calculation. Yet does the power to imagine considering using a victim’s nose for stew meat makes that speculating person a potential killer? Or does the experience of facing the darker parts of their nature make these murder fantasists emotionally stronger than advocates of behavioral suppression? Read the rest of this page »

by Slippery Lyzard | Cape Town, South Africa, Nov, 2012

Now this is filmmaking, even if it’s seems a tad amateur, it’s still brilliant. The concept, not the freshest since the fall of the western world but nevertheless, definitely plays into the human psyche of wanting to kill someone after they have fucked with you. I couldn’t think of a more original thing to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon other than finding a victim, torturing the bejesus out of them, and then systematically putting them out of their misery in any way conceivable. This may truly be art…

Quiet on set! Oh hello, I was just about ready to get into my directors chair. Now I know what you are thinking you’re a writer, what’s with all this film making mumbo jumbo? Well I’ll tell you; I was about to start production on a little script I wrote entitled “Death to all Lyzards”. You like? I thought you would. It’s a straight to the point feature with a plot so brilliant it will have you chewing your fingers right down to the bone. Want to hear it? Well it begins on a fine day quite like today and ends up with me the Lyzard King brutally murdering all Lyzard impersonators in the most creative way possible. You’re thinking it’s ok maybe a little cheesy but hey let me ask you this then; don’t you ever have any murder fantasies? Read the rest of this page »