[3] Its subject is the effect of an extraterrestrial plague brought to Earth by a Soviet chimpanzee cosmonaut after its capsule crash landed near the border with East Germany in 1958.

A struggle to find a cure ensues, resulting in a hybrid creature referred to as a chimera, genetically engineered from a green sea turtle, medicinal leech, and ocellated lizard whose purpose is to perform a kind of bleeding on the sick, effecting a limited cleansing of the patient's systems.

[2] He was also inspired by the period's American newsreels and science fiction B movies,[6] such as those by Roger Corman, and European classics such as Chris Marker's La Jetée (there is a flat shot done as an homage), and Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

[4] Die Schneider Krankheit shares a number of themes with Javier Chillón's second short film, Decapoda Shock: monstrous creatures resulting from "spatial" mutations or genetic manipulation, primarily derived from the science fiction B movies of the 1950s, the "atomic age".

"[2] Scholar Paweł Frelik [pl] remarks that this kind of "retro-inflected material enjoys significant popularity" in twenty-first century science-fiction short films, citing Die Schneider Krankheit, Matthew Savage's Reign of Death (2009), and Johan Löfstedt's Kometen (The Comet, 2004).

[7] Chillon originally intended to set the film in France, but quickly realised that the story ought to take place in Germany, which has always been the country of "mad doctors" in popular culture, and moreover, the Cold War-era Partition provided an excellent context.

It was important to Chillon to pay attention to the smallest details and create the right atmosphere; the individual elements (wardrobe, sets, actors, and so on) would only work when presented through the correct production values.

[4][2] Chillon had worked with 16mm and Super 16 as a student at Solent University, Southampton, but they were too expensive; he and Fuentes began investigating Super 8, wondering why it was no longer used professionally, and discovered friends from Solent University had worked with it, and lent them a Sankyo 320XL camera, which they thought looked like a "toy" when they first saw it; Chillon said jokingly it is the worst camera in the world, but he and Fuentes would not change it once they saw what it could do.

Shooting began with the most "delicate" parts of the short film, those with the largest sets, neither director nor cinematographer knowing what the outcome would be, having done no tests, also recording in ProHD, in case everything "went to hell", to have a video back-up.

"[3] The opening sequence and end credits, along with the dual Spanish-German soundtrack, appear to have been convincing enough to lead some viewers to believe the film is genuinely of German origin[14][15] (and in one case, Russian).

[18] Virginie Sélavie calls the short "inventive, intelligent",[19] and "fantastic": the "50s newsreel style is perfectly reproduced, while the reasonable tone of the reporter is brilliantly contrasted with the outlandish events depicted.

"This is science fiction that is a deadly accurate portrayal of the calm, governmental, ponderous yet urgent, carefully-framed and full-of-import quality found in mid-century documentary films.

[22]Reviewing the film at the Flatpack Festival, Alex King calls it a highlight of the event, but found it more than "somewhat frightening": "it captures perfectly the dark, clunky feel of old newsreels yet every single shot is created through original footage.

"[25] A Canadian reviewer at the Fantasia International Film Festival expected that a short mockumentary "should be awful, but this 10 minute gem shot on 8mm Tri-X stock is brilliant.

[16] By the end of its run in October 2011, Die Schneider Krankheit had been screened at 255 festivals, and won at least fifty awards or special mentions.