Details

Release year: 2006

Storyline

In Germany, as graduate student Katie Armstrong researches cannibal killer Oliver Hagen for her thesis, she becomes obsessed with her subject and ultimately plunges into a lifestyle similar to Hagen's and the thousands of people like him.

Top credits

Directors

Martin Weisz

Writers

T.S. Faull

Cast

Thomas Kretschmann — Oliver
Keri Russell — Katie
Thomas Huber — Simon
Rainier Meissner — Young Oliver

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Did you know

• When Oliver visits the Cannibal Cantina message board, the thread titles "Meat Hook Sodomy," "I Will Kill You," and "Orgasm Through Torture" are taken from songs by the death metal band Cannibal Corpse.

• "Inspired" by the real life story of the "Cannibal of Rotenburg", Armin Meiwes, who mutilated, killed, and finally ate a man who had previously agreed to Meiwes doing just that with him. Both men met on the Internet where media subsequently discovered vast communities of people fantasizing about eating and being eaten by others sharing their "quirk".

• 3rd March 2006: The state court in Kassel upheld a complaint from Armin Meiwes, 44, against the film Rohtenburg, which was due for release in Germany on 9 March. The court ruled that Meiwes' rights as an individual outweighed artistic freedom and that he should not become the object of a horror film. On May 26 2009, Germany's highest civil court overturned the ban, ruling that freedom of the arts took precedence over Meiwes' personality rights. The court also ruled that because the film didn't distort the well-known facts of the case, Meiwes' rights were not violated. The film was finally released in German cinemas on June 18 2009.