A Teen’s Summer Unravels as Father’s AIDS Diagnosis Sparks Fear in ‘Eklipse’
Austrian director Manuel Wetscher’s debut feature ‘Eklipse’ will premiere in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section on Sept. 5. The film, inspired by Wetscher’s own experience of his father’s AIDS death being kept secret, follows a teenager whose friend reacts with fear upon learning the father has AIDS. It explores how taboos and silence obscure important truths.
The film's title, rendered with a "k" in both German and English, references an eclipse as a dual metaphor—darkness that obscures vision while simultaneously exposing what normally remains unseen. Wetscher drew directly from his own 1990s childhood, when details surrounding his father's AIDS-related death were withheld from him, shaping the story's central conflict around familial secrecy.
The production unites Austrian and Italian companies, with Eutopiafilm and Albolina Film backing the project. Wetscher's creative partnership with co-writer Bernhard Jarosch extends back to earlier short films including "Magma" and "Four Seasons." The cast features Moritz Hohlrieder and Finley Brown as the teenage friends, with Hannes Perkmann as the uncle whose alpine dairy farm provides the summer setting.
This film may resonate with audiences who grew up during the height of the AIDS crisis, when stigma and silence shaped countless family experiences. By dramatizing how fear of "the gay disease" fractures a friendship, it could encourage conversations about how taboos still distort understanding of illness and sexuality today. Younger viewers may gain perspective on how far social attitudes have evolved, while those with similar memories might find recognition and validation in seeing this history addressed on screen.