For Andreas Kuhnlein creation is an act of violence that enables him to find something special in a piece of wood and set it free. Armed with a chainsaw the Bavarian artist works with anger, anxiety and desperation. Figures emerge from the wood, as well as something of himself. 

Kuhnlein wasn't always a sculptor. He used to be employed as an officer in the Federal Border Police, patrolling the border between the two Germanies. His work often conflicted with his own personal convictions and at the start of the 1980s he finally broke with his hitherto middle-class outlook. He resigned from his job and spent several years struggling to reconcile his beliefs.

Particularly angered by a statement from the former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger he picked up his chainsaw and created the sculpture 'Großinquisitor' (the great inquisitor) in one single session. This moment was his liberation. "The first thirty years of my life I had no interest in art or museums," he says, "But then it changed for the better."

"Everything I ever experienced happened in my studio", states the sculptor Hans Josephsohn, who for over 60 years has worked, with utmost dedication, on developing and refining his sculptural language. Josephsohn's life is crystallised in his large figurative pieces and each of his creations contributes to a cohesive body of work in which the same motifs are laboured over time and time again. Through close observation of his creative processes and rhythms of work, the directors Laurin Merz and Matthias Kälin allow us a new understanding of the work of the 82-year-old artist.

This insightful film follows the structure of Josephsohn's working day in his studio in Zurich where he first started working in 1943. In brief pauses from his work the sculptor talks to the filmmakers about his life in search of solutions to artistic problems. Merz and Kälin have created a wonderful portrait of a man, who only in recent years has attracted public attention, but has long been considered in certain circles to be among the greatest artists of his generation.