MISSING ALLEN

"MISSING ALLEN is a declaration of love to a dear friend. Allen Ross was my cameraman on seven films. He disappeared in November ´95, only weeks after we had finished the shoot for a documentary about the Mississippi River.

There were rumours that Allen had been murdered, but the police closed the case and listed him as a missing person. When all my hopes that Allen would resurface had evaporated I began my own investigation, and in the spring of 2000 I finally started to shoot MISSING ALLEN.

Shooting MISSING ALLEN took me from Chicago to Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming, and step by step it became clearer that I might not see Allen again.

Many times people come up to me after the film. They tell me that Missing Allen despite its sad ending celebrates the power of friendship. I could not agree more."

- Christian Bauer

"MISSING ALLEN is Christian’s most personal film and in my opinion it is his best. It brings together all the elements that fascinated my brother most in filmmaking. In this crime story he not only lives out his love for America, but also indulges his passion for poking around in deserted flats and houses, opening mysterious boxes and inspecting the contents with the sharp eye of a detective. What makes MISSING ALLEN the ultimate synthesis of his filmic achievements is the spiritual element of this film. The suspicion that his cameraman Allen Ross had become the victim of a delusional sect magically draws him in, for behind the familiar figure lies a human being who is always experimenting in a quest for the meaning of life. In that respect Christian and Allen were very similar; and filmmaking was one of these experiments."

- Matti Bauer