What He Did

In 1988 Jens Michael Schau killed his life companion of thirteen years in a jealousy fit. As his partner was Denmark’s best selling author and leading open homosexual Christian Kampmann the scandal was unprecedented. What went wrong? In this new documentary by award winning director Jonas Poher, Jens Michael Schau tells his story for the first time. Schau was sentenced to ten years in prison and served his time in a psychiatric hospital. He was released after seven years. Today he lives an isolated life forever punishing himself for what he did. The film evolves around the question: How do you live with having done something unforgivable, something for which you can’t even forgive yourself? “I never know if people will greet me or not when I meet them in the street, or even if they will acknowledge me. That is my cross to bear, one can say. That is, you’re convicted and you serve your time, and in theory you are free. But of course you aren’t really free. ” Jens Michael Schau says in the film WHAT HE DID is a Coming Out Story about love and jealousy told through inventive interactions between film and theatre. Observational documentary is mixed with fiction as acclaimed theatre Mungo Park examines and reconstructs the events that came to a fatal end.