Screening with Beautiful at the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, Schadenfreude is the first short film directed by Australian Peter O’Brien (Underbelly). And what a strange little film it is! Opening with a man (Barry Otto) hopping along on one foot with one shoe missing, the film becomes a mystical journey into a bar with a distinct carnival feel (think the Adelaide Fringe’s Garden of Unearthly Delights and you’ll understand!). Among a cast of weird and wonderful characters who look straight from the circus the man finds the normal-looking waitress (Miranda Otto), whilst having flashbacks to when he lost his shoe. He has no luck getting it back, as a very strange man with a gravity-defying moustache has kept it and not only added it to his vast shoe collection, but has done a few alterations to create something new with the shoe. All this man sets out to do is seek pleasure from the misfortunes of others, in this case by stealing their shoes, and the film is entitled Schadenfreude because the word means exactly that.

As with most short films, they are created to push the boundaries of what we would class as ‘normal’ cinema, and Schadenfreude certainly did that! The cinematography was excellent, interweaving black and white shots with those full of colour; memories with real life. The music was an important part of the film, since the only word spoken by all the characters was ‘shoe’. The costuming was also very well done, bringing to life the circus/carnival feel of the whole thing. Adding to this was the bar, which had been filmed in one of the old sets from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. Altogether, Schadenfreude was a very unique piece that the audience certainly found to be out of the ordinary!