It is sheer despair and rage that drive him onto the hospital roof. Firmly resolved to end his life, Louis steps up to the edge. Despite his fear of heights, Marcel Glauche had to endure a whole day up there. While the camera circled him and the showdown was shot as spectacularly as possible from various angles, he held his position at the precipice for minutes at a time. "At first I just felt woozy and then, at some point, really sick. But that's part of the job too." Before filming began, the action crew in the background had explained to the actor in the greatest detail how the safety rig securing him worked. "They were brilliant, I had complete trust in them." An extreme situation, then, both for the actor and for Louis, whom he played. Louis suffers from heart failure and is actually waiting in hospital for a donor heart. When he learns that it has been given to an oligarch, he loses control. Alerted by the hospital, a police officer comes up onto the roof to Louis, a man with whom he shares a fateful past. Pure drama. Director Nico Zavelberg staged the episode "Preis der Freundschaft" and skilfully coaxed all of Marcel Glauche's acting ambition out of him, even in the face of death. In hindsight he is proud to have done this shoot. "It was worth it," the actor reckons. If you want to see for yourself, you can get a short taste here.
In the Face of Death
