Tez kills for money. Charles Mahr, legendary gangster, hires her for the murder of one of his couriers. Once in Brussels, Tez finds herself involved in an intrigue in which she herself becomes the prey. Tez must decide of whom she wants to be the instrument. The new film by German director Christoph Hochhäusler, Death Will Come [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Christoph Hochhäusler
scheda film], is a classical polar in French, starring French-Belgian actress and singer Sophie Verbeeck and actor and filmmaker Louis-Do de Lencquesaing. The film has been selected in Competition at the Locarno Film Festival (7-17 August).

We are in Luxembourg. An art courier is stopped by the police. Hidden in a painting, the agents find a large sum of money in cash. The interception of a drug transaction has terrible consequences: soon after his release on bail, the courier is killed in a hotel room. Charles Mahr (le Lencquesaing), a powerful figure of Brussels’ underworld, for whom the courier worked, gives the order to hunt down the murderer, but leaves his right-hand man Zinedine (Mourade Zeguendi) in the dark on everything. The killer, a woman named Tez (Verbeeck), investigates the muder of the courier and discovers a conspiracy between emerging gangster deBoer (Mark Limpach), who wants to succeed to Mahr, and Zinedine, who feels left out by Mahr and fears he will go down with him.

“It fascinates me how gangster films talk about death and destiny without filters beyond the realism of contemporary cinema”, says the director in his statement. “This ‘modern form of tragedy’ (J-P Melville), this genre offers, playfully, the ‘‘extreme unction’”. Hochhäusler continues his exploration of genre cinema, the thriller, in which crime is intertwined with love and desire, with a direction that is always punctual and attentive.

The director from Munich has frequented the most important European festivals since This Very Moment, selected in the Forum section at the 2003 Berlinale, and then both Low Profile (2005) and The City Below [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], in competition last year at the Berlinale, Silver Bear for supporting actor/actress (Thea Ehre).

Written by the director with Elrich Peltzer, who had collaborated with him for The City Below and The Lies of the Victors, the film has Reinhold Vorschneider at the cinematography and Stefan Stabenow at the editing. Death Will Come is a co-production between Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium by Heimatfilm, Amour Fou and Tarantula. Italian outfit True Colours is handling international sales.

Watch our exclusive clip below: