‘Eismayer’ * * *
Manager: david wagner
artists: Gerhald Liebmann, Luka Dimic and Julia Koschitz
Premiere: 9/6/23
★★★
Scheduled to win the Grand Prix at the International Critics’ Week in Venice in 2022, ‘Eismayer’ is a very good first feature film. Inspired by a true story, David Wagner tells the love story between two men serving in the Austrian army.. The filmmaker, who is also the writer of the screenplay, writes and directs with admirable precision. Eismayer unequivocally exposes homophobia in the military by keeping it under control as well as coercion. And best of all, with the same economy of narrative and formal sobriety, it depicts two very complex characters: a sergeant whose brutality is feared (Gerhald Liebmann) and one of the soldiers (Luca Dimic) who must instruct and fall from within. Love
Eismayer is not the story of a love story in a hostile context. Something more ambitious. The starring double gaze is not affectionate. They are two characters with complex, contradictory traumas, secrets and unstable attitudes, especially the petty officer (violence, selfishness or abuse of power is abundant in his story). The escape from us into a hostile world to talk about how the hostile world can destroy (deny, hide, point out, traumatize) man is the most valuable thing about Eismayer. Maybe that’s why even though we know that the movie was inspired by a true story, its dynamics and The tone of the ending, in which the darkness is suspended, is not very convincing.