Bavarian filmmaker Herbert Achternbusch--who is always his own producer, director, scriptwriter and main actor--here portrays a Bavarian beer drinker, flycatcher and private eye who calls himself “Der Nil” (The Nile), “because I wander through the desert, wander through the desert and evaporate.” Der Nil, having stumbled, in the course of a civilian investigation, across the fact of his country's mass murder of Jews, now must drink several pints of beer a day in order to forget. He recruits girlfriends from the waitresses who serve him--but only those named Susan--and after he kills one of them announces that he doesn't care much for anything in this land of mass murderers. For one Susan, however, who also roams the postwar nation in despair, Der Nil is an oasis in the desert. Together they depart for Stromboli, whose volcano inspires the only way out of an inescapable reality. Achternbusch's first film in black and white is a work of deep sadness and despair. In a farewell letter to Susan, he writes, “In the thirty years' brutality of postwar Germany I have searched for you, for the tenderness, understanding, effortlessness, unassumingness and pride to survive this life with dignity.” Please Note: Our print is in German with French subtitles.