Plot

Television reporter Harry Schwerdtfeger (Harry Schwerdtfeger) and his team produce the reality TV show “Streets of Violence,” which successfully exploits crime, murder and rape with high ratings. When the capital's police crack down after a debacle involving a celebrity corpse, Schwerdtfeger runs out of material for his show. But necessity is the mother of invention…

With its length of 30 minutes and the precise but cold Betacam SP images, Berlin Snuff is clearly based on the aesthetics of reality shows from the 90s. As absurd as the plot may be, it is precisely this “cold” TV aesthetic, along with the extreme splatter effects, that keeps shocking the viewer. The film is not made out of necessity, but deliberately cast with amateur actors, which makes the weird comedy quite close to early Klaus Lembke movies or even the works of Helge Schneider.