Breathing [Atmen] **** (2011, Thomas Schubert, Gerhard Liebmann, Georg Friedrich, Karin Lischka) – Classic Movie Review 13,574

Thomas Schubert stars as a 19-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention centre, working in a morgue pending his application for parole, in the 2011 drama film Breathing [Atmen].

Thomas Schubert stars as Roman Kogler, a 19-year-old inmate in an Austrian juvenile detention centre, in writer/ director Karl Markovics’s 2011 Austrian art house drama film Breathing [Atmen].

The sullen, taciturn but defiant and determined boy is hoping to come out of the spartan young people’s offenders lockup while in the daytime trying to build a new life in a trial month employed in a work-release job as a mortuary attendant (his own choice from newspaper ads), an important qualification for his pending parole hearing in a couple of weeks.

But he encounters hardly a shred of human kindness among the people he meets, including his uncaring, chaotic probation officer Walter Fakler (Gerhard Liebmann) and his hostile mortuary co-worker Rudolf Kienast (Georg Friedrich), and he struggles desperately to deal with his guilt over the terrible crime he committed when he was a kid and his abandonment by his mother (Karin Lischka) at 14.

Breathing [Atmen] could be very bleak, and in some ways it is, but it is a beautiful film, exquisitely, delicately handed, quietly impactful throughout with an excitingly flavourful urban Vienna look, and finally overwhelmingly moving.

Yes, it is an art house film, it is a true work of art. It is emotionally intense, gripping and slow moving, understated, perfect, with a minimum of words (though when they come, they really count) and instead tremendously impressive visuals thanks to cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, slightly showy but in a good way.

Thomas Schubert won Best Actor award at the 17th Sarajevo Film Festival for his performance, presented to him by Angelina Jolie. As the award suggests, he is pretty much perfect too.

Roman never stood a chance, really, but at the end, somehow he is still breathing.

It was screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2011 and released on September 30, 2011.

Runtime: 94 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,574

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