Marcel Winatschek

In Frame, By Accident

Somewhere in the background of Liebesgruß an einen Engel—a German TV production with a cast that somehow included Keira Knightley—there’s a shot of what appears to be a stylish design agency, because it was a stylish design agency, ours, and a handful of us spent a day in it being professionally ignored while people with actual roles did their thing.

My contribution to the film was accidental. There’s a scene—I was there for it—in which an entire filing folder travels from one end of the office to the other, airborne, completely unintentionally. The cameras were rolling. I will say no more.

Christian Potschke played the security guard. It suited him. The rest of us mostly wandered in the background hoping to land in frame, grinning too much, too aware of the cameras. If they didn’t cut us out—and I watched every office scene carefully afterward—then somewhere in that film we’re visible: two people with no purpose, moving through the background of someone else’s story. An accurate self-portrait.