The Loneliest Man in Town

Al Cook is a Viennese musician. A throwback Elvis Presley-type singer and former local star, he now feels like an outsider in a modern world that seems a million miles away from his personal universe of old blues and 1950s Hollywood, VHS tapes, vinyl records and analogue players. Al is also the last person living in an old building slated for demolition, and he refuses to leave it despite corporate attempts to force him out. Known for their deeply empathetic approach to their characters, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel cast Al Cook—appearing here under his birth name Alois Koch—in a role directly based on his personality. Yet the film transforms his real-life image into an almost Beckettian performance of reverie and melancholia, loneliness and absurdist oblivion. As in the directors’ previous works, in which real people joyfully played fictionalised versions of themselves, Al embodies his character with attachment, irony and a sense of liberation. Like a clownish character from a Jacques Tati film—another alien lost in a modern city—he wanders through the deserted streets of a Vienna in flux feeling not only disconnected, but also blissfully free from having to belong to the new order. (Evgeny Gusyatinskiy)

In the presence of Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.
Audio description will be provided at screenings at Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus and Metro. More info here.

No tickets available for the screening and award ceremony at Gartenbaukino on November 3rd at 7.00 pm.

Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel (Auswahl): BABOOSKA (2005), LA PIVELLINA (2009), DER GLANZ DES TAGES (2012), MISTER UNIVERSO (2016), AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS DER UNTERWELT (2020), VERA (2022)