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A man in a permanent vegetative state lies in the Hernals Hospital for Eternal Life, reliving in his dreams the events that led to his hospitalization. His wife certainly had a hand in it. Several years ago, she vanished from his life without a trace, without explanation. Shortly before his admission, she reappeared at his medical practice, accompanied by a child he wished was his. In his waking dreams, memories of his ambitions and desires blur with realities drained of hope. As his condition worsens, his mother arranges for him to be cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Department (which conveniently adjoins the hospital). Meanwhile, his ex-wife summons a priest to perform the sacrament of extreme unction. During the farewell ceremony, she improvises a blood transfusion, giving her blood to the man. As the priest mistakenly administers last rites to the wrong body in the dissecting room, she bleeds to death in the operating theater—but then the man awakes from his coma. His mother, who had always disapproved of her daughter-in-law, rejoices at her death. Later, she takes her son and grandson to Vienna’s Prater amusement park, where the story began.
But then …
“How does one justify the telling (in English) of a modern saga about dying in Vienna, featuring a somewhat nonchalant Grim Reaper in an invisible leading role? At first glance the endeavour seems grotesque enough, particularly when undertaken by a non-native speaker such as myself – and I am someone who, in all other respects, valiantly seeks to defend the English language from its maltreatment as a lingua franca in global usage, for no reason other than that I love languages. And I am also utterly convinced that all texts are fundamentally untranslatable. All one can hope to achieve in another language is to permeate the very mindset of being itself, to seek a new way of reaching the same destination.
And so the Viennese spoken by the undertaker remained untranslated as I sought to tell the saga indirectly, with little in the way of language and the dialogues as voice vectors, using universal emotions as a response to the film images. Two experiences sustained me along the way. Carol Reed’s The Third Man (up until that point the most Viennese film bar none) and William Faulkner. But what if one has to leave one’s own language entirely to be able to describe its sociotope? And when I read Faulkner, I forget what language I am in; it is my own, and I breathe and live in an absolute language, free of any regionality, and I am at the centre.”
Bernhard Kammel
director
9th NEZ International Film Festival
Kolkata 2024 | Showcase Award
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Manikarnika International Film Festival
Varanasi 2022 | Best Foreign Feature Film
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GLOBAL CINEMA FESTIVAL
Siliguri | West Bengal | India
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BLOW-UP International Arthouse FILMFEST
Chicago 2018 | Antonioni Award Winner
Best Feature International
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33rd Warsaw Film Festival
Free Spirit Competition
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41e Festival des Films du Monde de Montréal
World Film Festival Montreal 2017
World Premiere
Lily – Enni Ojutkangas
Caspar – Edmund Kingsley
Little Caspar – Ilya Voznesensky
Prof. X – Larisa Udovichenko
Undertaker – Christoph Fälbl
Margo – Jan Graveson
Doctor – Francesca Mula
Father Noy – Ruben Paronyan
Margo, Lily and Prof. X voiced by Hayley-Marie Axe
Father Noy voiced by Jonny Mario Magnanti
Producer, script writer, production designer, director, cinematographer, editor
Bernhard Kammel
English translations: Stephen Grynwasser | Composer original music: Franz Hautzinger | Art director: Rudi Czettel | Costume designer: Elisabeth Nagl |Make-up design and SFX: Gabi Grünwald | Casting director: Vivek Singhania | Choreographer: Zinaida Lukas
Continuity: Renate Neugebauer | Unit manager: Anna Reschke, Renate Neugebauer |First assistant camera: Gerald Piesch | DIT: Jovan Stevanovic, Klaus Track | Key grip: Alex Haspel | Best boy electrician: Matthias Gansterer, Tobias Dorffner | Dolly grip: Urs Höfer | Assistant dolly grip: Florian Heusgen | Construction coordinator: Ferdinand Prinz | Set builder: Harald Lechner, Franz Spindler, Gunther Schäfer | Stand-by prop: Saskia Köck | Assistant costume designer: Michaela Kovacs | Wardrobe: Julia Kaßmanhuber | Make-up artist: Karin Ruthardt, Cathrine-Anne Philipp | SFX: TissiBrandhofer | Assistant SFX: Harry Siebler | Assistant to the editor: Klaus Track | Assistant to the director: Maria Udovichenko | Set runner: Jan Neugebauer | Set driver: Joschi Deininger, Bruno Bödenauer | Catering: Gaumenfreude Patrizia Fürnkranz-Markus
Music score, composition, trumpet: Franz Hautzinger | Clarinet & voice: Isabelle Duthoit
Hurdy gurdy: Matthias Loibner | Drums, percussion: Didi Kern | recording mix: Robin Gillard, FranzHautzinger
Tremens Film Ton Studio
Sound mixing: Bernhard Maisch, Manfred Folie | Sound design: Martin Gruenz, Manuel Grandpierre | Foley & dubbing recording: Manfred Folie | Foley artist: Andreas Schneider | Dolby Atmos sound mixing: Christian Lerch
Listo Media Services Cine Postproduction
Colour grading: Thomas Varga | Technical director: Herbert Fischer | SFX and titles: Geoffrey Kleindorfer | Digital cinema mastering: Alex Gruber, Mario Wessel