User Reviews

The Red Bridge is a highway overpass built over a small town in Europe. Unfortunately, the bridge became a magnet for suicides, which meant that the bodies would drop all over the houses and streets of the town below. People would be sitting at home eating dinner and suddenly hear a loud thud, and then go out to discover another dead body on the roof. The film has interviews with the townspeople and local officials about what it's like to live underneath the Red Bridge. Bizarre, but fascinating.

The less you know about this doc the better. And I would recommend not reading the other review (as of April 8, 2004) which I feel gives away the kicker/hook of the film.

It is basically about a Red Bridge in Luxembourg and the effect it has on the town that lives below it. I even think that is saying too much. If you can find it see it, 20 minutes well spent!

I caught it as part of a program of short films at the San Francisco International Film Festival several years ago. It was by far the best of the series. It stayed with me for years afterward, so much so that I felt compelled to write about it here.

I saw this on a double bill with "Dream Deceivers," a similarly macabre documentary. The film is a short (21 minutes or so) deadpan look at life in a small valley community in Luxembourg, that tiny European country next to Belgium. In 1966 a red-painted traffic bridge was built to span the valley, forcing the residents to put up with a steady stream of traffic about a hundred feet above their rooftops. The "red bridge" nickname took on a spookier tone when it became popular with suicides from all over Europe. Residents of the town literally had to look up whenever they stepped outside, lest they be struck by a falling body. People would hear bodies crash through their roofs and into the rooms below. Children walking to school became knowledgeable about the ways human bodies are affected by falls from a great height. "Sometimes they're just lying on the street and they look all right, but you know they're really broken up inside," one child remarks.