Actors need an audience. But when the usual creative work comes to a standstill due to a pandemic, when one is surprisingly without an income or perspective, it can sometimes seem like hell to suddenly be thrown back to oneself and into one’s own four walls. An inspiration for actor Lukas Benjamin Engel who then decided to initiate the elaboration of Jean Paul-Sartre’s No Exit as a creative testimony to our difficult situation during the pandemic.

In order to get the broadest possible individual cross-section of our suffering industry, he decided to use perhaps the simplest and most personal form of filmmaking: e-casting. No direction: absolute freedom in the creation of the text and the chosen means. More than 70 participants in 4 basic costumes bring 49 pages to life in over 100 individual contributions, thereby giving us a glimpse into their own individual purgatory.

Through Johannes Franke’s editing, a two-hour art film has emerged from this “everyone plays for themselves”, which is a contemporary testimony to the reality of artists during the Corona pandemic but also a declaration of love to our industry’s diversity and creativity. It shows the colorful variety of creative possibilities for the roles on the one hand and for the process of “e-casting” on the other. A huge puzzle of individuality, diversity and creativity in which Sartre’s masterpiece comes to life.