Eklipse

Summer, 1999. The millennium is looming and “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by the Eurodance group Eiffel 65 is topping the charts across Austria where, surrounded by pastoral beauty, two 12-year-old boys are learning about dairy farming. Between daydreaming and rabble-rousing, Tomy (Moritz Hohlrieder) and Chris (Finley Brown) are receiving lessons from Tomy’s uncle Georg (Hannes Perkmann) about how to build a dam and treat udder infections. Meanwhile, Tomy’s mother is hiding a dark secret from her son regarding the reason his father is in hospital. But gossip is hard to contain in isolated places and, when Chris is informed about Tomy’s father’s illness by a milk-truck driver, he quickly withdraws, leaving Tomy to uncover the truth about his uneasy world.

Eklipse is the feature-length debut of Manuel Wetscher, who penned the script alongside Bernhard Jarosch, and whose work as a filmmaker and photographer has explored universal themes rooted in biography and identity. While cinematographer Simone Hart’s keen lens perfectly captures what lies beyond the bucolic landscape, Wetscher and editor Anna Kirst seamlessly incorporate personal VHS footage to blend reality with fiction. 

Wetscher’s marriage of poetic realism with the harsh realities of misinformation, ignorance, and bigotry is flanked by a sylvan original score by Johannes Winkler and Marco Schröder. While the highly anticipated 1999 solar eclipse comes and goes, everything that was shrouded in darkness suddenly comes to light, though the exposure may not be enough to overshadow the past and truly enlighten.

DOROTA LECH

TIFF Next Wave: Celebrating the highs and lows (and everything in between) of young voices in today’s fast-moving world. This film has been selected for the next generation of film lovers by the TIFF Next Wave Committee.