Alfred Edel’s Attack on Himself is a kaleidoscope of historical sequences that Jan Soldat has edited into a crescendo of emotions and laughter that is practically impossible to remain indifferent to. At the Viennale 2025.
One smiles while watching Beautiful Dead Woman. One smiles, because the editing work is also intended for this purpose, but one does not laugh, as one has in previous works of this kind. Jan Soldat, in this case, wants to communicate something else to us. And by choosing this particular mise-en-scene, he has also offered us interesting food for thought. At the Viennale 2024.
Ordinary can sometimes become extraordinary. Jan Soldat knows this well. The shots are constantly static and essential. Warm colours make us feel immediately at ease. After Work is a sharp and realistic picture of an ordinary day. At the Viennale 2023.
Irony, poetry and, above all, great classics of film history to which the great Christopher Lee took part take on a new form in Faces of Death, which, in just seven minutes, never stops surprising us. At the Viennale 2023.
Blind Date immediately stands out not only for its extremely direct and realistic approach, but also for a kind of deep melancholy, which, together with a welcome touch of irony, results in a work that actually shows us the brief story of two solitudes. At the Viennale 2022.
A series of falls from height, but also splatter scenes, close-ups of bloody faces, screams, screams and more screams. Staging Death – ironic, clever, but also incredibly reverent towards the great Udo Kier – represents a milestone in Jan Soldat’s filmography. At the Cannes Film Festival 2022, section Quinzaine des Réalisateurs.
Nullo was shot with very few means and in a single location. In the protagonist’s small bedroom, there is only him and the director. And even on this occasion, Jan Soldat’s poetics and style are clearly recognisable. At the Viennale 2021.
Always the storyteller of a world unknown to most, of the world of the outsiders, of those who are marginalised by society because they are considered ‘different’, ‘perverse’, ‘sick’, the young German documentary filmmaker Jan Soldat, in his Resident Ground Floor, takes us by the hand into Heiko’s everyday life – letting him confide and show himself as he is – proving to be as detached as necessary, but also incredibly close to his protagonist.