Series 6 x 25 min.

Why am I standing in the slow queue? Why am I getting fired? Why is she falling in love with him and not with me? Why me? That’s the question we all ask ourselves so often. In six episodes, David Schalko tells of life situations in which this question takes center stage. Why me? A humorous firework display with a German star ensemble.

Content:

Why me, asks pop singer Jeff Kanter (Charly Hübner) in the episode “Cowboys”, when a nasty surprise awaits him at a living room concert. Together with Monika (Andrea Sawatzki), he dances on the precipice of a dark cellar staircase.

In “Regensburg”, a cold-blooded HR manager (Nora Waldstätten) gets caught up in her biggest nightmare scenario. A dismissed man jumps in front of the train. The compartment becomes an emotional cell. A rollercoaster ride – until a supposed rescuer (Bjarne Mädel) arrives. And yet something is wrong with him.

In “Freunde”, Dominik (Thomas Schubert) has to ask himself: Why am I of all people being kidnapped by a stranger (Merlin Sandmeyer)? The beginning of an unusual friendship with potential. After all, more than two can fit in one car.

In “Lebenskerze”, Hans (Robert Palfrader) reveals to his empathy-less family that he wants to make use of end-of-life care. But his children only ask: Why me? And never: Why him? The dinner table becomes an emotional battleground.

In “Mondfenster”, an adolescent asks himself: Why did I of all people have to be born into a prepper community where it is forbidden to walk over the edge of the forest because that is where gravity stops? A youthful act of liberation in a special milieu. The Addams Family is probably functionally opposed to this.

And last but not least, “Casa Carmen”, a restaurant where a drama revolving around the question of the series takes place at every table. Why am I, of all people, a cuckoo’s child? Why am I being blackmailed by my 10-year-old son? Why couldn’t she marry someone else? At the end, the supposed savior comes out of the train (Bjarne Mädel). And in this case, that doesn’t mean anything good again.

“Warning: This series endangers your aesthetic well-being, will drive you crazy and may contain traces of Kafka. The only thing that helps against “Why Me”, the cinematic short story collection by ‘Braunschlag’ and “Kafka” filmmaker David Schalko, is: watch it. Preferably one after the other. Ghostly stories of people in ingenious storms of dialog. People who – often in non-places like Kassel – fall into the madness on the edge of which they have been living for some time. Surrounded by horrible wallpaper, hideous furniture. There is murder, bad singing, everything goes wrong. It is unbearably great.”

– WELT AM SONNTAG

“David Schalko’s wonderfully entertaining anthology series ”Why Me?” is a very successful experiment. A series of six consistently brilliant mini grotesques.”
“The way Charly Hübner and Andrea Sawatzki play it is to die for. Like all of the six episodes, this story is set in extremely low-light, claustrophobically cramped locations – and is an unparalleled firework display of dialog.”
“And with a nonchalance and mastery that is unparalleled far and wide.”

– BAYERN 2

“What Buck performs, a play within a play, is a dystopian pile of fun”
“Schalko’s series ensemble, which also includes Nora Waldstätten, Bjarne Mädel, Katharina Thalbach and other stars, shines in its performance and gratefully picks up on the morbid charm and melancholy wit of the script. “Why Me?” thus becomes crazy fun about all the madness lurking out there. It’s been a long time since German television has been this claustrophobically cheerful.”

– FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG

“Strangely good”
“These are six oppressively funny short films about human abysses and the tendency to self-pity, to ”Why me?“.”
“”Why me?” may be manageable, but that doesn’t make it any less artistic. On the contrary, the series is edgy, it is sophisticated to the point of being strange, more like a play than like standard German Otto television.”
“”Why me?“ is not just the legitimate exclamation of someone despairing at fate, it is not just a rant about his misfortune, but – as the series masterfully shows – also a symptom of a society that is unable to cope with the imponderables of life due to its self-centeredness.”

– SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

“Why me?” was the responsibility of Austrian David Schalko, who is considered a master of the grotesque. Most recently, he paid homage to the master of grotesque storytelling with a series: Franz Kafka. He did not pretend to be able to approach the Kafka enigma psychologically, but rather used the writer to describe the mechanics of alienation from the world. The short horror pieces in his new series work in the same way: with well-oiled mechanics, they often lead to an unexpected resolution. Then there can even be small moments of happiness in Schalko’s grumpy miniatures: When any hope of tenderness has already been trampled underfoot – and yet it still materializes.”

– SPIEGEL / SPIEGEL ONLINE

“The creator of “Braunschlag” in top form”
“There’s a bit of Roald Dahl and his morbid short story collection “Kuschelmuschel” in there, this unerring interweaving of everyday ennui and unexpected moments in which the ground is pulled out from under the characters’ feet and horror finds its way into a supposedly everyday situation. But it is also always unmistakably Schalko, who created one of the outstanding German-language series of the last 15 years with “Braunschlag” and has since then repeatedly presented special television with an unmistakable signature, ambitious, intellectual, profound with formats such as “Altes Geld”, “Ich und die Anderen” or most recently “Kafka”. “Why Me? ” is like letting the pitch-black soul dangle, a petitesse with an announcement, a finger exercise for stretching and stretching, an experimental arrangement with astonishing outcomes, produced by Schalko, Katharina Theissen and John Lueftner with their Superfilm, each around 20 minutes short, six wild beats of the heart with the laconicism of a Kaurismäki and the nonchalance of a Jarmusch, six groping forwards into supposedly very clear situations, which the maker allows to be carried out of the curve”
“always with adequate images by master cameraman Martin Gschlacht”

– THE SPOT

Book: David Schalko

Director: David Schalko

Camera: Martin Gschlacht

Producers: John Lueftner, David Schalko, Katharina Theissen

A Superfilm production in co-production with ARD Degeto with support from FISA+ and Film in Austria (ABA) for ARD.