Tyrannis

In the dark forest, a muezzin calls; a father goes down to the cellar armed with an axe; a very fat girl stomps her feet in defiance and makes the whole house shake. A fairytale mood pervades “Tyrannis” by Ersan Mondtag, the eerie kind of fairy-tale. We watch the avatar-like movements of a red-haired family, via CCTV in their rooms and live in a strange kind of open-plan kitchen, like a human zoo. They don’t talk, they follow strict rituals and they are hiding secrets. Did terrible things happen in the past or are they still in store for these zombiesque detached-house-souls? A patient contemplation of Mondtag’s room-world-dreams evokes associations of horror movies and computer games, of David Lynch and the Brothers Grimm, but also of a petit bourgeois claustrophobia à la Fassbinder and the bashful characters of Christoph Marthaler. The powerfully pictorial concentration composed from these influences by the 28-year-old performer and director produces an intimate commonplace horror in an enchantingly wayward atmosphere.

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