SATANIC SOW
Director Rosa von Praunheim
Docufiction, D 2025, 85 min.
The sow is me, played by my alter ego, the brilliant actor Armin Dallapiccola. The movie is a dream, a parody, a farce of my life: poetic associations with my death, my sex life, my rebirth. I revisit some of the 150 films I’ve made, think of my lovers – a couple of whom I reward by sticking flowers up their asses and whom I have to paint blindfolded. Then my neighbour dies, leaving behind an infinitely sad widower. A fan rings my doorbell and forces me to have sex after death, and my friends sing the song “Great God, We Praise You”. But God Himself explains His perverse morality, praising evil and deeming good to be naive. My mother, played by Anne Rathsfeld, is horrified and the stuffed apes and pigs that come to life illustrate my great love of animals. At one point, Katy Karrenbauer reveals to us the terrible truth: we are all satanic swine.
Rosa von Praunheim
Inhalt
Synopsis
The sow is me, played by my alter ego, the brilliant actor Armin Dallapiccola. The movie is a dream, a parody, a farce of my life: poetic associations with my death, my sex life, my rebirth. I revisit some of the 150 films I’ve made, think of my lovers – a couple of whom I reward by sticking flowers up their asses and whom I have to paint blindfolded. Then my neighbour dies, leaving behind an infinitely sad widower. A fan rings my doorbell and forces me to have sex after death, and my friends sing the song “Great God, We Praise You”. But God Himself explains His perverse morality, praising evil and deeming good to be naive. My mother, played by Anne Rathsfeld, is horrified and the stuffed apes and pigs that come to life illustrate my great love of animals. At one point, Katy Karrenbauer reveals to us the terrible truth: we are all satanic swine.
Rosa von Praunheim
Rosa von Praunheim
Credits
Credits
with Armin Dallapiccola, Justus Herrmann, Nico Ehrenteit, Katy Karrenbauer, Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg
Director ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM
Script ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM
Director of Photography LORENZ HAARMANN, ELIAS REDLITZ
Editing ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM, MIKE SHEPARD
Casting THOMAS MELZER
Sound MORITZ HENNEBERG
Sound Mix LORENZ FISCHER
Music ANDREAS WOLTER
Producer ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM
Pressestimmen
Press Reviews
Filthy Affairs by Rosa von Praunheim
The actor Armin Dallapiccolla introduces himself as Armin Peter von Mehl, who, in this film, is supposed to play the alter ego of Rosa von Praunheim. A seemingly impossible task, but with the right amount of naïveté, it becomes doable. This marks the beginning of a journey through von Praunheim’s thoughts, revolving around sex and death—thoughts that are broken, dissected, interrupted, and most of all: vomited out.
A "satanic sow"—meaning: it’s all about filth, about being a show-off, which both Dallapiccolla and von Praunheim embody, and about how the good ones are shockingly dumb and naïve. Toward the end, God Himself proclaims this; and maybe it’s true—if one interprets "naïveté" positively, just as the film interprets "filth" positively. A game with plush pigs, a game with nudity, and a game with what conservative circles brand as immoral.
The film is deeply personal to Rosa von Praunheim, yet it is never clear what exactly this personal aspect is. Because Armin Dallapiccolla plays both his alter ego and himself, in interview scenes where he speaks about himself—perhaps also about Rosa, but definitely about gay life, survival, and experience. Right at the beginning, he even suggests that a trigger warning might be needed: "Caution, you’re about to see a fat old gay man!"
Rosa von Praunheim has always engaged in cinematic self-exploration, but now he has definitively arrived at what is called the "late work" phase—where one reflects, collects, and sums up the past, the origins, essentially creating an artistic legacy. Except, Rosa von Praunheim doesn’t care whether his film says something about him or whether the audience can make sense of it. What matters is that they get a show. Naked young men, for example, whom Armin/Rosa paints while blindfolded, before kissing their anuses and placing roses inside them. That is probably the most explicit scene, but there are also colorful monkeys, a murderous fan, and a mother who coldly and cruelly berates her son—threefold. A urologist appears, as does Hell itself, and even Putin as an embodiment of the misunderstood gays of the 1980s ("I love 80s fags," it says above the image of the half-naked Russian neo-tsar on horseback).
Interspersed are highlights from Rosa’s career—how the tabloid press attacked him after he outed colleagues on RTL, the hate letters from Nazis, the talk show accusations of making disgusting films for gays—yuck. And then there’s what Rosa does best: finding people, tracing their lives, and seeing the extraordinary in them. For instance, a neighboring couple—shown in a clip from 2012, then revisited in the present. Their love still endures, even though one partner has since passed away. Back then, Rosa himself portrayed them; now, his alter ego sits across from the widower. His grief is real, while the visitor is artificial—yet the moment remains authentic. Or the visit to an old, overweight, gay ex-priest, barely able to move, who fought for years against the Catholic Church to receive the pension he was owed.
Cheerfully, Rosa von Praunheim explores the theme of endings, which, of course, also means tackling religion, the church’s homophobia, and the hypocritical morality that has shaped society for two millennia. The film is wild, jumping from one topic to another, much like Rosa’s films have always leaped from one thought to a thousand others before circling back. What is beauty in life, amidst all the violence, war, pandemics, and hatred? Are art and culture enough to make life worth living, or is it just love?
This film is wild, witty, and surreal. In an archival snippet, Rosa himself declares: "Anger is the most important thing for any creative person." Rosa von Praunheim provokes—provocation is the foundation of his art, stemming from his rage against society’s supposed morality. This film, too, is a provocation—not in the sense of causing outrage, but as a challenge to the viewer to engage with the cinematic thought world of Rosa von Praunheim. Starting with the pig, he once again casts a gaze upon God’s colorful zoo—onto the rainbow-hued world that awaits those willing to embrace it.
kino-zeit.de, Harald Mühlbeyer
Biografie
Director's Biography
Rosa von Praunheim is considered an important representative of postmodern German cinema in the genres of documentary, auteur, and avant-garde film. He became a public pioneer and one of the co-founders of the political gay and lesbian movement in the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly with his 1971 documentary It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives. His body of work includes numerous films, books, radio plays, and theater pieces, and has received multiple awards. In 2015, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz).
Selected Filmography:
1970 Die Bettwurst
1970 Armee der Liebenden (Army of Lovers) - Dokumentarfilm
1971 Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation in der er lebt - Dokumentarfilm
1976 Ich bin ein Antistar. Das skandalöse Leben der Evelyn Künneke - Dokumentarfilm
1978 Tally Brown, New York - Dokumentarfilm
1981 Unsere Leichen leben noch - Dokumentarfilm
1983 Stadt der verlorenen Seelen (The City of Lost Souls) - Dokumentarfilm
1984 Horror Vacui
1985 Ein Virus kennt keine Moral
1987 Anita – Tänze des Lasters
1989 Überleben in New York - Dokumentarfilm
1989 Schweigen = Tod (Silence = Death) - Dokumentarfilm
1992 Ich bin meine eigene Frau (I Am My Own Woman) - Dokumentarfilm
1996 Neurosia – 50 Jahre pervers
1999 Der Einstein des Sex (The Einstein of Sex)
2002 Tunten lügen nicht - Dokumentarfilm
2005 Dein Herz in meinem Hirn
2011 Die Jungs vom Bahnhof Zoo - Dokumentarfilm
2015 Härte
2022 Rex Gildo – Der letzte Tanz (Rex Gildo – The Last Dance) - Dokumentarfilm
2024 Dreißig Jahre an der Peitsche (Twenty Years at the Whip) - Dokumentarfilm
2025 Satanische Sau (Satanic Sow) - Dokumentarfilm
Interview
Interview
I Believe in Sex After Death
Markus Tschiedert for B.Z. – February 14, 2025
Rosa von Praunheim (82) believes that death is like an orgasm, and he also believes in sex after death. At the Berlinale, he is now presenting his documentary Satanic Sow, a film about himself. B.Z. met him at his home in Wilmersdorf.
B.Z.: “Satanic Sow” – why this title?
Rosa von Praunheim: I am the Satanic Sow. It’s a film about animals—pigs, monkeys, and flies. A film about death and rebirth. A long poem about sex.
I’ll explore that further in my next film: Sex and Death. That film will depict my final 13 days of life.
Didn’t an astrologer predict that you would die on October 16, 2023?
I had already invited people to my funeral. But no one showed up—including myself.
Do you often think about death?
It would be unnatural not to think about death at my age. And besides, it’s fun. When I was 20, I staged my own funeral and painted nothing but black pictures. At 40, I wanted to get a crocodile to eat me alive. But my boyfriend was against it. Then I made a film about hell: Rosa’s Descent into Hell.
Are you afraid of death?
No, quite the opposite. Death is like an orgasm. I believe in sex after death. As an expressive person, death means peace to me. I’ve already secured a communal grave at the Old St. Matthew’s Cemetery. My partner Olli, my ex-husband Mike—whom I’ve worked with for 50 years—and probably Elfi Mikesch with her wife will be buried there as well.
Do you believe in reincarnation?
Yes, I want to come back as a strawberry frog. They’re small, poisonous, strawberry-red, and have an amazing sex life.
Festivals
Festivals and Awards
2025 - 75th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale, Panorama) - World Premiere
TEDDY AWARDS - BEST DOCUMENTARY
Pressematerial
Press Kit
Attachments: File Description File size 
Rosa von Praunheim - Portrait6693 kB Satanic Sow - Still 11218 kB Satanic Sow - Still 2973 kB Satanic Sow - Still 31911 kB Satanic Sow - Still 41578 kB Satanic Sow - Still 51006 kB Satanic Sow - Still 61403 kB Satanic Sow - Still 71223 kB Satanic Sow - Poster918 kB Jetzt im Kino
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