Perhaps you know the feeling, the strange tingle of vertigo you get when you’re having an entirely normal conversation with an acquaintance, and you suddenly realize that for seemingly no reason — and often about the most inconsequential things — they are lying to you. Jöns Jönsson’s “Axiom,” a standout in this year’s Berlinale Encounters section, is physically set in a comfortably well-educated, middle-class Austrian environment. But its psychological terrain is discomfort. This is a fascinatingly perceptive film about casual falsehoods, compulsive fakery and crumbling facades.
Appropriately, then, it begins in an art gallery. Julius is a museum attendant, moving soundlessly from room to room, politely chiding visitors who take photos or drink from water bottles. What he doesn’t do, and what Johannes Louis’ deceptively anodyne camera never allows him to do, is fade into the background the way museum attendants should. You are always conscious of him there,...
Appropriately, then, it begins in an art gallery. Julius is a museum attendant, moving soundlessly from room to room, politely chiding visitors who take photos or drink from water bottles. What he doesn’t do, and what Johannes Louis’ deceptively anodyne camera never allows him to do, is fade into the background the way museum attendants should. You are always conscious of him there,...
- 2/17/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Memories are filtered by opinion and worldview. How often is it allowed to wander into a new life? We all are accessing a sea of stories, as Salman Rushdie calls it, or are “dipping into the big cauldron of story,” as Maria Tatar said about the Brothers Grimm.
Julius, played by the marvelously versatile and uncanny Moritz von Treuenfels, works as a security guard in a museum. He gives tips to new hire Erik (Thomas Schubert) about the “horror” of having to stand by the video art installations, about tyranny and negotiation, and invites the newcomer from Lower Austria to join him and his friends, Jonas (Max Themak), Lizi (Ines Marie Westernströer), and Savo (Zejhun Demirov) on a sailing trip on his aristocratic family’s boat.
From the very start writer/director Jöns Jönsson has us pay attention to what is overheard. Be it a tour guide explaining a Mondrian.
Julius, played by the marvelously versatile and uncanny Moritz von Treuenfels, works as a security guard in a museum. He gives tips to new hire Erik (Thomas Schubert) about the “horror” of having to stand by the video art installations, about tyranny and negotiation, and invites the newcomer from Lower Austria to join him and his friends, Jonas (Max Themak), Lizi (Ines Marie Westernströer), and Savo (Zejhun Demirov) on a sailing trip on his aristocratic family’s boat.
From the very start writer/director Jöns Jönsson has us pay attention to what is overheard. Be it a tour guide explaining a Mondrian.
- 2/16/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Writer-director Mehmet Akif Buyukataly ably toys with our preconceptions in the unsettling opening scene of his assured debut, Oray, winner of the best first feature award at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. As the title character, played with charismatic intensity by Zejhun Demirov, addresses an unseen group while looking directly into the camera, he speaks of his awakening while serving time in prison for burglary, an experience that made him question the value of his life. "Either Islam or nothing," he says. "Heaven or Hell."
Those uncompromising words create the false impression that what Oray ...
Those uncompromising words create the false impression that what Oray ...
- 6/21/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Writer-director Mehmet Akif Buyukataly ably toys with our preconceptions in the unsettling opening scene of his assured debut, Oray, winner of the best first feature award at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. As the title character, played with charismatic intensity by Zejhun Demirov, addresses an unseen group while looking directly into the camera, he speaks of his awakening while serving time in prison for burglary, an experience that made him question the value of his life. "Either Islam or nothing," he says. "Heaven or Hell."
Those uncompromising words create the false impression that what Oray ...
Those uncompromising words create the false impression that what Oray ...
- 6/21/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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