Manuel Wetscher's 'Eklipse' to World Premiere at Venice Film Festival
Austrian filmmaker Manuel Wetscher's feature debut Eklipse will world premiere in the Horizons section of the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 5 September, with The Hollywood Reporter exclusively debuting a clip from the film ahead of the screening.
The title — spelled with a "k" in both German and English, meaning "eclipse" — carries deeply personal roots. Wetscher drew on his own childhood experience: the details of his father's death from AIDS in the 1990s were kept from him. That silence sits at the centre of the story.
Set on an alpine dairy farm in Austria, Eklipse follows two teenagers, Tomy and his best friend Chris, who spend a summer helping Tomy's uncle with the milking. Moritz Hohlrieder stars as Tomy, with Finley Brown as Chris and Hannes Perkmann as the uncle. Tomy's mother keeps the real reason his father is in hospital a secret from her son. When Chris learns that Tomy's father has been hospitalised with what is described as "the gay disease," fear takes hold — and Tomy faces rejection and his family's silence.
The official Biennale synopsis describes the film as a story about the taboos surrounding AIDS and the fear of social exclusion, showing how prejudice and ignorance shape a family's choices.
Wetscher co-wrote the screenplay with Bernhard Jarosch, his collaborator on the short films Magma, Four Seasons and At Night When Mice Scream. The cast also includes Lenz Moretti, Lisa Schützenberger and Barbara Romaner. Simone Hart served as cinematographer, and Anna Kirst edited the film.
The Toronto International Film Festival catalogue highlights Wetscher's "poetic realism," noting how the film brings emotional turbulence to its bucolic setting. Wetscher is also an established photographer, according to Screen Daily. Eklipse will screen in German with Italian and English subtitles, per the official Venice programme.
Production was a cross-border effort: Austria's Eutopiafilm and Italy's Albolina Film produced, and Films Boutique is handling world sales — the arm of the industry that licenses a finished film to distributors territory by territory. South Tyrol's IDM Film & Music Commission flagged the premiere in a July release celebrating regional productions heading to Venice.
The Horizons section, known in Italian as Orizzonti, is Venice's dedicated showcase for work that pushes formal or thematic boundaries — a fitting launchpad for a debut that turns a childhood secret into its central drama.
Eklipse runs 109 minutes and screens on 5 September.
