Pfitscher

Pfitscher

In a village in the South-Tyrolean Alps, you become a rebel quite quickly: it is enough to simply lie by the creek rather than with everyone else at the outdoor pool.
Pfitscher, Florian Kofler´s debut film, tells of little escapes like this and the young man who commits them with growing self-confidence: ten-year-old Patrik, who spends the summer with his father, a trout breeder, whom he has just met.
The relationship between man and boy is told as a pragmatic accessory of routine business: the daily feeding of the fish, scooping them up, and striking them dead. Smoking and packing them — and then silently eating grilled chicken at night, with hands, directly from the aluminum package with a cola and playstation for desert.
Patrik first senses himself, his own power, when he moves into the woods with Melli, a young woman who has just lost her summer job; sunbathes on warm rocks and jumps into an icy-cold pool under a waterfall. Those who suspect a classical young-love story are wrong—well, not exactly, as Patrik recognizes that required for acting in a self-determined way, is to love life and himself.

The amateur actors play their parts comfortably laid-back, in South-Tyrolean dialect. Over all, Pfitscher deals sparingly with dialogue and explanatory moments. “Do the fish know that they are here?” Patrik asks after he spies into the dark of the trout pool with a diving mask. His father blankly shrugs his shoulders.
Pfitscher is the story of a child that wakes up to ask questions—and to this extent, a coming-of-age film in the best sense. Rather than being about growing up, it is about not becoming cemented in your everyday life, like these adults. And that´s why the film ends with an unusual departure.

(Maya McKechneay)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt




PFITSCHER is a film between the worlds: that of a valley, that of global connections, and that of the desires of the people who live in these worlds. The story centers around Patrik, a ten-year-old boy who notices summer day that he is not coping with the world he lives in. In his very own way, he sets out in search of a way out.

(Synopsis, Florian Kofler)