Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007)

Mixing elements of narrative experimental pseudodocumentary and essayist cinema Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors Klaus Mann John Gross a presentday Philadelphia avatar of the reallife European author of Mephisto lives in the shadow of his father the eminent intellectual novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann Ernst Hohmann When Klaus pens a controversial essay on revolutionary suicide and then acts on it in protest of the worlds selfishness a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path It is a film about the creative process the tragic depiction of a strained fatherson relationship and most of all it is a film about individuality