Venice Debut 'Eklipse' Confronts Family Silence Around AIDS in 1990s Austria

Austrian director Manuel Wetscher's feature debut, premiering at the Venice Film Festival, draws on his own experience of learning decades later that his father died of AIDS. The film follows a teenage boy in 1990s rural Austria whose father is hospitalized, and whose friend reacts with fear upon discovering the illness is AIDS. Wetscher aims to create a sensory experience while addressing themes of rejection and the stigma surrounding the disease.

The film is set at an alpine dairy farm in 1990s Austria, where teenage Tomy and his friend Chris spend a summer working for Tomy's uncle. The story centers on Tomy's hospitalized father, whose AIDS diagnosis is concealed by the family. When Chris learns the truth, he reacts with fear, leaving Tomy isolated by both rejection and his relatives' silence. Wetscher's own father died in 1993 at age 40 from Kaposi's sarcoma, an AIDS-related cancer, though the director only learned this years later from a relative at a birthday party.

Wetscher co-wrote the screenplay with Bernhard Jarosch, his collaborator on several earlier shorts. The production comes from Eutopiafilm in Austria and Albolina Film in Italy, with Films Boutique handling worldwide sales. The cast includes Moritz Hohlrieder, Finley Brown, Hannes Perkmann, Lenz Moretti, Lisa Schützenberger, and Barbara Romaner. The title, spelled "Eklipse" in both German and English, references an eclipse, a motif that also appeared in Wetscher's earlier short film Magma.