An anarchist trip through the modern world. This satire on power, money, ideologies and social conventions renounces traditional storytelling in order to experiment with cinematic form and language.

An anarchist trip through the modern world. This satire on power, money, ideologies and social conventions renounces traditional storytelling in order to experiment with cinematic form and language.

Includes brief references to almost all of Alexander Tuschinski's films until 2014.

Filmed with one single camera.

Philipp Metzler was originally supposed to play only the student during the picnic-scene. As Alexander Tuschinski liked Metzler's acting during that scene very much, he decided to merge a few separate characters in later scenes into one single character, expanding the student's originally supporting role into one of the main characters.

As with most of Tuschinski's films, both Matthias Kirste and Alexander Tuschinski receive credit as cinematographer. When Tuschinski acts, Kirste operates the camera - and when Tuschinski doesn't appear in the shot, he operates the camera himself.

Alexander Tuschinski: [squirrels] When Jane waits at the cemetery, she observes multiple squirrels.

Alexander Tuschinski: ginal songs] Break-Up features two original songs by Alexander Tuschinski that are interwoven into the narrative to advance the storyline.

The ending to the picnic-scene where books are thrown at Arnold was developed on the set. Instead of throwing books, in the screenplay the scene originally ended quietly, with Arnold continuing to read his book in frustration. The film was then supposed to cut to a comedic scene in which Arnold unsuccessfully tries to seduce an egotistical literature-student. As Alexander Tuschinski liked the new transition of Arnold running away from the thrown books to his conversation with John, he decided not to film the seduction sequence.

The sequence in the white room in which John describes how smalltalk works, actually started out as the opening to a theatre-play that Alexander Tuschinski drafted before writing the film. When writing Break-Up, he decided to shelve the play and use its opening scene in the film.

The character played by Sebastian B. is called Arnold Richter, just like in Menschenliebe (2010). Although the events in Menschenliebe are never directly referenced in Break-Up (2014), the two films appear connected: In Menschenliebe, Arnold Richter studies physics, but wants to be a writer. Thus, he is frustrated with his studies. In Break-Up, Arnold starts as a dis-illusioned literature student. It could be speculated that after the end of Menschenliebe, he switched Majors at University - only to start disliking literature by the time that Break-Up starts taking place. This connects the worlds of the two films, and makes Break-Up an indirect sequel of Menschenliebe. The behaviour of Arnold is similar in both films, and seveveral actors reprise their roles from Menschenliebe with a slightly different tone. Alexander Tuschinski regards the films as very different, but tightly connected at the same time.