Director’s Note

About the title

Markus Hautz

Human life comprises 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds a day. Exact points of time mark the beginning and the end of our lives. In the meantime the planet Earth revolves 29200 times and the hands of a watch move 700800 times their lonesome track. We hardly ever notice how time determines our habits, our leisure time and our whole lives. We rush from date to date. Time seems to be more important than our real needs. Does it make any difference? Perhaps it is already scheduled what is going to happen at a certain point of time. Perhaps we are determined by some unknown force. Perhaps time and fate are just the same …

This accounts for the title 22:43 – a point of time which is also a symbol. It stands not only for a particular point of time in the life of the protagonist… it stands for a point of time in everybody’s future – a point of time nobody is ever likely to forget.

22:43 is the point of time, when many lives change irreversibly. 22:43 is the point of time, when the second chance leads to utter disaster. 22:43 is the moment when the present and the future blend into one. At exactly 22:43 it becomes evident that fate determines the future…

There are four different narrative levels, i.e. there is no overall chronology, however, each level shows a certain chronology. In order to differentiate the individual levels, they have a different colour code.

About the structure

The protagonist Max is on the first level. We take his point of view in his world, we are at his side and we experience everything through him and with him. This ist he most frequent level. It is the PRESENT, where most of the actions take place.

On the second level Max is the narrator, who comments and recaps everything. He is omnipresent but not omniscient. He complements the first level and connects to the third level.

The third level comprises the time from the disappearance of Max in 2006 till his reappearance in 2009. The focus is on his girl Hannah, how she tries to come to terms with the loss, how Max’ best friend Chris looks after her and how she is eventually murdered. Level one and three are closely intertwined, because only by knowing the third level you can fully comprehend the first one, i.e. it contains vital information and thus is absolutely essential. At times the two levels become one as if there were only ONE timeline, thus creating an AHA-experience.

The fourth level is set in the year 1994 and shows how it all began. There is the unsolved murder case of the solicitor Dr. Klaus Antgruber. This is a black and white scene because it refers to the past. The flashbacks are connected chronologically and stylistically, but the do not offer Establishing Shots or the like. The viewer is expected to put one and one together. The fourth level is closely linked to the first one, because the unsolved murder is finally explained.

About the plot

Time travel is a fascinating topic, which has always occupied people’s minds – about a better time, about a better life and about better points of time. Knowing your own future sounds very desirable for many people. Nothing would take us by surprise. We would be prepared. There might even be the chance to change what we don’t like about the future. However, can’t knowing your own future be a curse?

Thinking of time travel we usually think of machines which make it possible – be it the past or the future, to prevent apocalypse, without interfering with space and time … à la „Back to the Future“.

By chance I came across the urban legend of Rudolph Fentz, who disappeared without a trace at the end of the 19th century and reappeared in New York in the 50ies. I picked up the idea of time travel without technical means and combined it with chance and fate. Time travel in 22:43 can be compared with a tunnel that connects the present and the future. However, you don’t enter this tunnel voluntarily. You are thrust there. Whoever enters this tunnel reappears in a different dimension thus eliminating the risk of meeting your own self. I deliberately wanted to rule out this option because it is all too familiar. Questions like „What would the protagonist do if he knew the future?” and „Would he try everything to change his life?“ showed me the way along the dark future of the protagonist. The answer is “Yes, by all means.” Each of us would do the same if he had the chance.

This created the dark scenario, where I wanted to give the protagonist– like Rudolph Fentz – the chance to see his own future by accident. Contrary to Fentz my protagonist should not perish in the moment he experienced the new world, but he should have the chance to com-prehend that the future is the logical result of his own actions before his disappearance.

The visit of the future ends with his death, but this does not mean the end of his existence because at the very moment of his (apparent) death he makes another time travel to the evening of his disappearance when everything began.

Somebody or something wanted to show him „If you go on living like this, something terrible is going to happen.” The protagonist must realize that his passion for writing is the trigger for his future suffering and mourning. He knows what he has to do: destroy the manuscript to save the lives of the ones he loves and his own. He has to get rid of everything he has toiled for in the last few years.

This is where the second element of the plot comes in: fate. The protagonist does get a se-cond chance to change the course of events, but the terrible events do happen nevertheless – slightly earlier and a little different. The protagonist is confronted with the greatest tyrants of our time, coincidence and time, which veils the true intentions of fate. This is the central question: „Is it possible to prevent the death of a person you love or does he have to die if fate has selected him?“

I also wanted to introduce a philosophical level and attempted to answer the following ques-tions: Could we change our future if we knew it? Is fate irrevocable? Is there something like hope, e.g. for „better times“ or is this simply a devilish device to keep people pursue happi-ness whilst fate happily determines everything anyway?

This film is my effort to answer these questions but – honestly: Who would not like to know his future? This would satisfy our natural curiosity. However, watch out, if we get a second chance… we might just be meeting our fate.

Markus Hautz