Elysium Hernalsiense | A film by Bernhard Kammel | AT 2017

A 2017 | color | 76 min. | 1:2.35 | English original

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 …

Producer, writer/director, production designer, cinematographer, editor –
Bernhard Kammel