''Otomo'' is a German film about the person who stabbed several German police officers in 1989, killing two. It was made 10 years later, directed by Frieder Schlaich, distributed by ArtMattan productions, and was released in 1999.
Actor
Isaach de Bankole plays Frederic Otomo, and actress
Eva Mattes
__NOTOC__
Eva Mattes (; born 14 December 1954) is a German-Austrian actress. She has appeared in four films directed by director Rainer Werner Fassbinder ('' The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant'', ', '' Effi Briest'' and '' In a Year of 13 Moons ...
, Gisela, the woman who tries to help him.
Otomo was the winner of numerous awards, including the Diversity in Spirit Award, Vancouver 2000, Best Film, Belgamo 2000, Best Actress, Valinciennes 2000 and a Kino Award.
Critical reviews
The film received generally positive reviews from Western critics. The review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
reported that 100% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 10 reviews.
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
reported that the film had an average score of 60 out of 100, based on 8 critic reviews.
Plot
The journey begins with Frederic Otomo departing from his home, early one morning, to get a job at a factory in Germany. There, he is refused employment from a cast of all Caucasian workers, predicated upon the claim that his shoes are not proper for the work. Later, he departs for home on a train, disappointed, to be kicked off of the train by a ticket inspector who claims that his ticket has expired. Suddenly, Otomo becomes a fugitive when the ticket inspector refuses to let him off of the train, and instead tries to have him arrested. Fleeing, he later encounters a grandmother who attempts to help him escape Stuttgart, to Amsterdam. He kisses her then leaves, and is finally caught by police officers, while he is waiting for her on a bridge. Left no choice but to defend himself, Otomo, in desperation, stabs the five officers, and one of them shoots him dead.
Otomo (1999) - IMDb
/ref>
Background
The movie is a fictionalized account of an event that occurred on 8 August 1989 in Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...
. Frederic Otomo, a Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
ian who also used the name of Albert Ament from Liberia, fatally stabbed police officers Harald Poppe and Peter Quast with a bayonet hidden in a rolled-up newspaper and wounded three other police officers before being fatally shot by one of the officers. See :de:Polizistenmord auf der Gaisburger Brücke
References
External links
*
1999 films
1999 drama films
German drama films
1990s German-language films
Films about illegal immigration to Europe
Films about race and ethnicity
1990s German films
{{1990s-Germany-film-stub