A strong inner conflict is the real focus of Sparta. Ewald laughs when he plays with the children. Slowly, however, his laughter turns into a cry. A cry that nobody notices, that only vents inside a car or in the retirement home where his father is. Subtle facial expressions say more than a thousand words. Ulrich Seidl (and the excellent Georg Friedrich) render all this perfectly and show us how the protagonist is actually the only real victim of his own weaknesses. At the Viennale 2022.
With Rimini, Ulrich Seidl once again gives us a merciless portrait of the world in which we live, in which no one is given a chance to save themselves, in which there is no hope for a better future, in which old songs from World War II still echo through the corridors of a shabby retirement home and act as a sad leitmotif in our lives.
Disenchanted, rational and appropriately satirical – with even a touch of subtle irony – Lourdes, by pointing the finger at a hypocritical and “respectable” society that lives only on illusions, shows us a very different reality from the one we imagine.