You know how they say that movies should take us on a journey? London, the new film from Austrian director Sebastian Brameshuber (Movements of a Nearby Mountain; And There We Are, in the Middle) set to world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, does that, literally.
Bobby is always on the road, driving his car back and forth on the highway that links the Austrian cities of Vienna and Salzburg. Thanks to a car-sharing service, he picks up other people, who are traveling the same route but are looking to save money on petrol. Along the way, they talk.
Among the people he meets are a young man struggling with the country’s mandatory military service, a supermarket trainee visiting family, an academic looking at the history of the highway, and a queer woman about to get married. “The most important thing for me was making this film about these encounters between strangers,” explains Brameshuber.
“Different paths, different accents, different stories, most of them true,” reads a synopsis. “Bobby listens, but also speaks about himself, about his youth, about aging, about his friend in a coma in Salzburg, who’s the reason for all these trips.” By collecting these human interactions, the film ends up “creating a portrait of today’s Europe,” it notes.
London is described as “neither a documentary nor entirely fiction,” and “a quietly political portrait of today’s Europe via its in-between spaces and those passing through them.”
Square Eyes is handling world sales for the movie from Panama Film producers David Bohun and Lixi Frank that will debut in Berlin’s Panorama program on Feb. 16. THR can now premiere the trailer for London.
“Shot in a studio, London stages encounters between strangers during a series of ride-sharing trips,” says Brameshuber. “The minimalist setup, akin to a chamber play, allowed for a process-oriented approach involving the actors and the story. I wanted to capture a sense of raw presence while using cinema to elevate it to another plane, creating a film that oscillates between the real and what lies beyond it.” The conversations are unscripted.
The setting of the film is the Westautobahn, or A1, which the director calls “a seemingly functional highway connecting Vienna and Salzburg before ending at the German border. People from across Europe travel along it for a variety of personal reasons, often unaware of the deep vein of history running through it – for this road follows a line first drawn almost 90 years ago, at a time of great unrest.”
And he offers: “The A1 twists and turns like a river, its banks accumulating stories and history like sediment: past and present, private and political, trivial and profound. Despite being strangers, the time Bobby and his much younger passengers share in a confined space draws them closer. At times, they become a mirror, reflecting the lives he could have lived back at him.”
If you’re ready for a first taste of the journey that is London, buckle up and meet Bobby and some of the people he encounters in the exclusive trailer for the film.
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