Just before mother is to transfer the family business and the accompanying imposing mansion to her son, she collapses. This is fortunate for her other son because he is in danger of losing out owing to his far-right sympathies. Yet her death turns out to be not as final as hoped; as she signs her will a little later, other dead relatives appear. Everyone apart from Hermann Ullich, the head of the family, who died in 1945 in Vienna in a bombing raid. At least, that’s what people thought. During a long night, more and more indications emerge that history actually took a very different course. Virgil Widrich, whose previous feature Heller als der Mond (2000) had its premiere in Rotterdam competing for a Tiger Award, does not allow himself to be hemmed in by something as banal as reality in this lighthearted murder mystery. Dead people walk into the room as if they have never been away. How passé is the past?, the film seems to ask. There are certainly a couple of old political ghosts that have certainly not yet come to rest.
Film details
Productielanden
Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
Jaar
2016
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2017
Lengte
92'
Medium/Formaat
DCP
Taal
German
Première status
None
Director
Virgil Widrich
Screenplay
Virgil Widrich
Cinematography
Christian Berger
Editing
Pia Dumont
Production design
Christina Schaffer
Music
Siegfried Friedrich
Principal cast
Laurence Rupp, Amira Casar, Barbara Petritsch, Elisabeth Rath, Linde Prelog, Johann Adam Oest, Lukas Miko
Producer
Alexander Dumreicher Ivanceanu, Bady Minck, Raphael Barth
Sound design
Michel Schillings
Production company
Amour Fou, Minotaurus Film, Golden Girls Filmproduktion & Filmservices, KeyFilm