Special screening for Thomas Mann’s birthday with actor Sebastian Schneider and author Wolfgang M. Schmitt in attendance.
About the Film:
For nearly 50 years, Thomas Mann worked on his novel Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. In no other work did the writer pour so many of his personal desires and fears. Confessions of Thomas Mann, the Confidence Man offers a look behind the façade of the celebrated storyteller and into the dazzling world of his literary alter ego, Felix Krull.
While Krull attracts, deceives, and seduces the elite as a successful con artist, Thomas Mann wrestles with his inner conflicts: yearning for recognition, concealing his true identity, and striving to play the role of the impeccable family man. The intertwined paths of Mann and Krull become a captivating journey through exile, self-staging, and the bittersweet art of disguise.
Drawing from a kaleidoscope of original quotations and fictional scenes, the film creates, with fine irony, a cinematic homage to the person behind the myth of Thomas Mann—and the confidence man in all of us. Directed by André Schäfer, the film blends documentary and fiction, using archival footage, letters, diary entries, and dramatized episodes to explore the complex relationship between Mann and his alter ego Krull.