The next day, they’re calling it a Kubrick party – something that passes for humour in academia. It’s a lecture and interview with a self-confessed cinema expert who has written a book on the film director, followed by a viewing of Barry Lyndon.

Some party.

Starts at 19:00. May go on past 23:00.

Ines Dupont is a film lecturer at the Université Bordeaux Montagne. Young, unorthodox, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the moving image and an off-beat beauty that suggests she fell straight out of a black-and-white movie herself.

It’s the kind of party she loves, that she never misses.

During the lunch hour, she hands out leaflets saying that she killed herself after her last lecture. She smiles at the students – some that attend her classes and others that know of her – and they smile back at another of her quirks.

Three hours later, her auditorium is packed and the projector is ready to roll. She shows clips from Harold and Maude and The Death King and The Fire Within. She talks and everybody listens. She asks questions and hands shoot up to enter into a dialogue with her.

It’s not just about the films, it’s about love and death and the choices we make. It’s about the party later and whether or not she will tell the author of the book that she thinks Kubrick is overrated and that Stephen King is right to hate the movie of his book, The Shining.

They stare at her, laugh with her, watch the screen and make notes.

She clicks the remote control to move on to the next slide then places it on her desk.

The students read, white font on a black background.

Nous sommes Le Peuple de choix.

Ceux maintenant armés de courage.

Et nous choisissons de ne pas avoir peur.

And before most of them have reached the end of the sentence, Ines Dupont has reached into her top drawer, pulled out a loaded handgun and shot herself in the head.

Roll credits.

53

Outside Stuttgart, in the town of Neckarsulm, Harald Yeoman sits in his beat-up Polo, waiting for all the other cars to leave the Kaufland car park.

He could’ve parked up in his garage and attached a hosepipe to the exhaust. He could have slowly drifted towards death in a fume-filled haze. But that doesn’t always go so well. It doesn’t always work. Then you have to explain yourself.

Herr Yeoman reads the newspaper. He starts at the back with the sport and works his way to the front. Borussia Dortmund are looking strong this season. He drinks a carton of apple juice. And he watches as the final employee leaves the building.